Ian, Thanks for the explanation. It seems to me, after reading the various replies I've seen is that it is a combination of several things. I don't think it is just the email client. (I'm guess that's what you mean when you say "Mail user agents")
I have been using Outlook (not Outlook Express) for several years. I was using Outlook 97, then 98 and now 2000. This problem started for me about a year ago when my company switched mail servers from a Linux based server (sendmail? I think) to Microsoft Exchange. At the same time, I upgraded from Outlook 98 to Outlook 2000. So I'm not sure which upgrade caused to spaces to start appearing ( I was on this list before the upgrade and don't remember ;) the problem being there then) I figured out that spaces were causing the problem several months back, but it's only a minor annoyance. I even tried to write a custom script in the Outlook rules to strip out the spaces, but I didn't have time to finish it. I may try to get back to it now them I'm annoyed again. I'll post a notice (not the code :) if I get it working. I did ask one of our IT guys to see if he could figure out where the spaces were coming from, and I'll pass on anything definitive that he figures out... Thanks again, Larry -----Original Message----- From: Ian Griffiths [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, June 13, 2002 8:41 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: OT: spaces in subject line "Mike Woodring" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > I've noticed that all of the postings to this list (and the other > > DevelopMentor lists I am on) have a subject line with five (5) > > spaces in them. > > [mw] Doesn't happen to me or others I know of. Actually it happens to me, and several other people working for the company that runs this list to my certain knowledge. But not all of them curiously... > It's probably an issue with your email provider; ...but my email provider is the same organisation that runs this list. :-) So it's probably not that. In fact I know that's not it. It's not actually an issue with the list or the email provider. It's an issue with email client software. Mail user agents are *supposed* to ignore extra spaces at the start of lines whenever subjects (or other headers) are split over multiple lines. Certain email clients don't. Those email clients are buggy. Sadly, some of them are also very widely used. LISTSERV, the email software user to run this list, seems to exploit this flexibility for email headers - it appears to split long subject lines over multiple lines, adding loads of extra spaces at the start of the line. It is allowed to do this - check out section 3.1.1 of RFC822 for more details. The problem is that whenever an incorrectly implemented email client fails to strip out the extra spaces, and then sends the message with no line breaks in the subject line (or line breaks in different places) we end up with a new subject line. So this means that certain people on the list are simply using buggy email client software. (Unfortunately it's apparently a very common bug.) Outlook Express is one culprit. (That would make me one of the culprits... But I try to remove all the spaces Outlook Express erroneously puts in whenever I reply to a message with a long subject.) It successfully strips these spaces out where it should when displaying subject lines in the list of emails. But when you reply, it leaves all the spaces in. What I don't understand is how not everyone sees the problem. The bug in Outlook Express causes it to send well-formed emails that unambiguously have these spaces in the subject headers. (This is how new thread titles start.) For example, the thread "Help with error The msiexec.exe is linked to missing export msi.dll-222" gets broken - there is also a thread which, according to the rules of RFC822 unambiguously has the subject "Help with error The msiexec.exe is linked to missing export msi.dll-222". (Just in case that got wordwrapped, there are spaces between "missing" and "export" and "export" and "msi.dll-222".) Those extra spaces were put in by whatever email client Patrick Steele is using. The fact that certain email clients stuff up the Subject line in the reply is a bug (or at least a poor implementation; technically speaking it's not actually against any technical specs to scramble the Subject line in a reply, AFAIK). But given that they did this, any other email client software should correctly display those Subject lines as they are. *Not* to display the brokenness would be a bug. So if Mike's not seeing the spaces on at least some message subjects, there's something wrong with his email client... So it looks like some people are using email systems that strip out *any* long runs of spaces in Subject lines (which is *not* what you are supposed to do - you're just supposed to strip them out from the start of the line). From what I remember, Outlook does this. But in any case it's not a problem with the list. Not according to the specs for internet email at any rate. It's unhelpful that LISTSERV sticks these spaces in, but it is quite unambiguously permitted to do so by the RFC822 spec. The fact that it causes problems is a symptom of bugs in email clients. (But I still wish LSOFT would stop LISTSERV from sticking in these spaces, since it's such a widespread bug.) -- Ian Griffiths DevelopMentor You can read messages from the DOTNET archive, unsubscribe from DOTNET, or subscribe to other DevelopMentor lists at http://discuss.develop.com. You can read messages from the DOTNET archive, unsubscribe from DOTNET, or subscribe to other DevelopMentor lists at http://discuss.develop.com.
