Re: Line break problem

["John S. Denker" <jsd@MONMOUTH.COM>]

I beseech you to go vote.  We don't need more laws, but we need
prosecutors and judges who will enforce the existing laws.
Elections have consequences.  Two years ago the incoming
administration all-but abandoned the antitrust case against
Microsoft.  The guy now in charge of cleaning up the securities
industry used to be the lawyer for Ivan Boesky.

Michael Edmiston wrote:
> This is not a Mac versus PC thing.  Nor is it a Microsoft versus
> non-Microsoft thing.

I disagree.
It is a Microsoft/PC thing.  Detailed explanation follows.

> It is a discrepancy/incompatibility between the
> encoding used to send messages.

It is a discrepancy/incompatibility introduced by Microsoft,
in violation of long-established standards.

> Whose fault is it?  Everybody who wants increased features beyond
> plain-text messages using 127-character ASCII font.

It is Microsoft's fault.  Quoted-printable was intelligently
designed to be backward-compatible (to the extent possible)
with naive recipient software (i.e. software that has no idea
what quoted-printable is).  Microsoft trampled this.

> The people who say "I haven't had a problem with Eudora" (or whatever)
> aren't getting the benefits of these increased features.  The people who
> say "I haven't had a problem with my Mac" (or whatever) aren't getting
> these benefits either.

False.  People who use non-Microsoft stuff can use
quoted-printable with virtually no problems.

> In an organization (like a college campus, or public school) that uses a
> robust system like Outlook/Exchange, we can do the following things
> within our e-mail system... i.e. from within Outlook.

Calling it "robust" doesn't make it robust.

> (1) Send messages to each other that include any fonts installed on our
> machines, in any colors and sizes, and with embedded formulas, etc.  I
> can make it look fancy on my screen, and people on campus getting the
> e-mail see the same thing I see.

That's all fine, but on a message-by-message basis, if you
don't use those features, there is NO REASON (excluding
unreasonable reasons such as Microsoft arrogance and illegal
exploitation of monopoly power) why quoted-printable should
cause problems for naive recipients.

> (2) ... (3) ... (4) .....

Ditto.

> But the problems arise when I need to interact with people using a
> different e-mail system.  They may have a vanilla system that can't
> understand any of my special features because they don't have those
> special features.  Or, they may have a system as robust as mine, but
> it's different, so the systems can't understand each other.

Robustness is the wrong word and the wrong concept.  There
are at least two issues:
 a) having a cornucopia of features, and
 b) being backwards-compatible.

Microsoft does fine at (a) but fails at (b).
Most other modern software succeeds at both.
(Of course some software is feature-poor, in which case (b)
is moot.)

Please keep in mind
 -- It is not illegal to be a monopoly.
 -- I have not opined as to how Microsoft became a monopoly
    (i.e. whether the becoming was by legal or illegal means).
 -- There are, however, 100-year-old laws restricting how a
    monopoly may exploit its power.  Microsoft has REPEATEDLY
    been convicted of violating these laws.
 -- A monopoly has an incentive for introducing an endless
    string of incompatibilities -- to force everybody to upgrade
    again and again.

> For e-mail exchanges outside of my system, there needs to be some
> least-common denominator that allows some level of basic communication
> between the systems.  At one point that allowed only all-caps alpha with
> numbers and a few punctuation marks.  But it graduated to the full
> 127-character 7-bit ASCII, then the 255-character 8-bit ASCII, and began
> adding other things such as soft returns, ability to add attachements,
> etc.

I agree, there needs to be a LCD.  Fortunately there is an LCD.
Unfortunately Microsoft tramples it.

> Unfortunately, not everyone agrees on the current least common
> denominator, so an e-mail system needs to recognize several basic
> encoding methods on incoming messages so it can receive them and display
> them properly.  And it must send messages using one of these encoding
> methods.
>
> Microsoft Outlook automatically detects many incoming formats and
> handles them correctly.  It also has several options for encoding
> outgoing messages.  However, the "lowest" available level for outgoing
> messages is plain-text encoded as MIME-quoted-printable.  Apparently
> Microsoft thinks everybody in the world ought to be up to at least this
> level.

That's a correct analysis.  What Microsoft "apparently thinks" is
that it's OK to violate standards.

> Apparently PHYS-L is not.  Is that arrogance on Microsoft's
> part?

Yes.  Arrogance, or worse.

> Is it arrogance on the part of computer
> manufactures like Dell that it is not an option to order a computer with
> a 5.25 floppy-disk drive?

Dell has lots of competitors from whom one can buy a computer
with no 5.25 floppy.  Been there, done that.

========================

Earlier Michael Edmiston wrote:
...
> 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.

Contrast that with
  http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2821.txt

At the bottom of page 53 it says:
   There are several objects that have required minimum/maximum sizes.
   Every implementation MUST be able to receive objects of at least
   these sizes. .... To the maximum extent
   possible, implementation techniques which impose no limits on the
   length of these objects should be used.

Then on page 54 it says:
   text line
      The maximum total length of a text line including the <CRLF> is
      1000 characters (not counting the leading dot duplicated for
      transparency).  This number may be increased by the use of SMTP
      Service Extensions.

 From which we conclude that there is NO REASON (again excluding
unreasonable reasons) to force a line-break (soft or otherwise)
at column 132.

This posting is the position of the writer, not that of Bill Gates or
Ivan Boesky.

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