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Line break problem



John M. mentioned I have solved my problem with = signs at the end of lines, but I still have a hard wrap at 132 characters. Here
is what I can tell you about this.

The problem is simultaneously a problem with Microsoft Exchange and also with Outlook/Outlook-Express and also with PHYS-L.

The Microsoft-Exchange default method of sending messages is MIME using the encoding method called "quoted printable." This is a
very widely used e-mail format and my messages don't have any problem anyplace I've ever sent them other than PHYS-L. We have
obtained some advice stating that quoted printable is occasionally bad for sending e-mail to list servers, but we have used it to
send e-mail to a dozen list servers and PHYS-L is the only one that gives problems. So the list-server software used by PHYS-L is
not reacting favorably to "MIME quoted printable" even though some other list servers handle it just fine. Perhaps Dan can find out
if there is a way to fix that because I am not the only PHYS-L member to have this problem, although there aren't many of us.

The reason this message is better than many I've sent is because I am sending it from home. At home I use Outlook Express. At my
office I have to use Outlook so I can interact with the campus e-mail system and appointment calendar/meeting scheduler, etc.

In Express, it is an option to tell Exchange to turn off the "quoted printable" encoding and I have done that. In Outlook there is
no way to turn this encoding off. Our network manager could turn off "quoted printable" encoding for all e-mails leaving Bluffton,
but he won't because it is the preferred method for most people because it gives extended features. I am the only one in a campus
community of over 1000 e-mail users having this problem. That gives you an idea how rare it is for an e-mail recipient to have a
problem with MIME quoted printable. I am the only one of 1000 Bluffton people that uses PHYS-L; I am the only one having a problem;
our network manager isn't going to turn off "quoted printable" for everyone just because I have a problem with one e-mail recipient.

The line-wrap at 132 characters is caused because Microsoft Exchange allows the e-mail sender to force line breaks at anything
between 30 and 132 characters per line, but it does not allow no line breaks. If it is sending quoted printable, the automatic
line-break is sent as a soft-return and the recipient's software can ignore it and wrap the text to fit the recipients screen. Soft
return is one of the extended features of quoted printable, but as mentioned, PHYS-L can't handle it. At home, when I turn off
"quoted printable", the auto line wrap must be sent as a hard return, and the recipients software can't ignore that. So I set the
wrap to the 132-character maximum so this happens as few times as possible.

So that's the current state of affairs. There is a problem at my end because I can't turn "quoted printable" off at my office and I
can't turn line wrap off at either home or office. But there is also a problem at the PHYS-L server because it ought to be able to
deal with "quoted printable."

Michael D. Edmiston, Ph.D.
Professor of Physics and Chemistry
Chair of Sciences
Bluffton College
Bluffton, OH 45817
(419)-358-3270
edmiston@bluffton.edu

This posting is the position of the writer, not that of SUNY-BSC, NAU or the AAPT.