Section 3.4. Address Specification of RFC2822 specifies
name-addr = [display-name] angle-addr
What are the length limits on the display-name field? I take it a long
display-name
value would simply be folded as described under 2.2.3. Long Header Fields
AFAICT the relevant specifications impose no limits on the size of the
display-name. What implementations actually do is another matter, of course. I
believe I've encountered limits as low as 64 octets. I certainly wouldn't
recommend putting in stuff longer than 100 or so octets and expect it to pass
through everything intact.
Are there practical length limits with respect to current SMTP clients
and servers?
Given that there are clients which don't show users the display-name at all, I
suppose the practical length limit could be seen as zero. Those clients that do
display this information often allocated a fairly narrow field to it, so I
wouldn't count on anything more than 30-40 characters (not octets) being
visible.
Ned