On Sat, 23 Aug 1997 18:02:02 -0400, Stan Ryckman
<stanr(_at_)sunspot(_dot_)tiac(_dot_)net> wrote:
I think whoever told you that was some sort of DOS-moron who thinks that
DOS/Windows defines "must be".
Explain why that would be true (lf+cr) since UNIX machines were the only
ones using internet mail for many many moon.
For the record, this is also not true.
Why, I don't know. Probably someone powerful with a brain-dead OS
insisted on it when the standards were being negotiated. It does
seem kind of silly to waste bandwidth on all those useless CR bytes,
but that's not going to change now. Imagine the mess.
RFC822 is dated 1982, at a time when I'd imagine TOPS-20 (CRLF??) was
a pretty big player. Not to mention MVS (? LRCF?? + 0x6f0f7f and stand
on your head??), Multics (LF??), even CP/M (CR), and later VMS (CRLF?).
RFC959, the ftp spec, is from 1985 and discusses implementation issues
on Multics and TOPS-20 as well as Unix and "IBM mainframes".
/* era */
who only barely was beginning to bug his poor parents about getting a
home computer back then (first exposure: Sharp programmable calculator
with BASIC, autumn 1981).
Got my history books at home and Alta Vista is a lousy tool for
checking up on these things.
--
Defin-i-t-e-ly. Sep-a-r-a-te. Gram-m-a-r. <http://www.iki.fi/~era/>
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