What happens when you send a really long link through the system? In this
case, I suspect that the line is broken before Mailman ever sees it - it
would be broken if you sent it to a standard mail client just the same.
But what you are sending is a text URL, not a link. The link the reipient
sees (that isn't working) is created by the recipient mail client based
on starting with http: and ending with whitespace.
Here is your original URL, I've put it back on one line:
http://labtest.ca.boeing.com/~psim/NewRtPlatform/test_plate_form_notes.07_18_02.html
Now, here it is again as a link:
http://labtest.ca.boeing.com/~psim/NewRtPlatform/test_plate_form_notes.07_18_02.html
Unfortunately, that's behind a firewall and nobody outside The Kite
Factory will know if it worked again. Here is one that should be long enough
to break anything, based on all the URL encoding I used. First as text:
http://www.domainvanhorn.com/dropbox/copy%2520of%2520van%2527s%2520self%2520portrait%2520in%2520the%2520bathroom.jpg
And now as a link:
http://www.domainvanhorn.com/dropbox/copy%2520of%2520van%2527s%2520self%2520portrait%2520in%2520the%2520bathroom.jpg
I won't know until this goes through the system, but I suspect that
all four will be broken onto two lines, but that the linked versions will
still work. Maybe we'll all learn somethign at that point.
It's a universal problem. As the number of documents on a server grows,
I think we're going to have to abandon the idea of having humans read URLs
for taxonomy - it leads to URLs that break in too many places.
Van
Richard Barrett wrote:
At 09:22 19/08/2002 -0700, Wang, Mary Y wrote:
>Hi,
>I am using Mailman 2.0.6-1 and Sendmail-8.11.6-3. My users are
complaining
>about the line wrap problem when send mailing mail to the mail list
with a
>long URL. It seems line wraps text lines that are longer than
80 characters
>with no white-space. If you include a long URL in a email message
it
>usually gets split onto separate lines and the typical email reader
within
>BCA (exchange) marks the first part of the link as clickable when
usually it
>isn't. People have to paste the whole link back together manually
in a web
>browser input dialog to get it to work.
>
>First, I thought it maybe a Sendmail problem. So I tried send a mail
via
>Sendmail with a long URL and it appears to be fine. The long
URL did split
>into two lines, and the second line is still highlighted as a href
link, so
>there was no problem. By clicking the link, the browser would
bring up the
>correct information.
>
>However, sending an email to the mail list is a different problem.
>
>For example,
>http://labtest.ca.boeing.com/~psim/NewRtPlatform/test_plate_form_notes.07_18
>_02.html will show up with 2 lines and the second line would be ml
and
>wouldn't be highlighted as part of the URL that is clickable.
>
>Any clue?
>
>Thanks for any help. We had this problem for about a year.
I finally got a
>chance to look into it now.
>
>Mary
>(562) 797-1545
I suspect at the back of this is what RFC2822 says and how some Mail
Agent
code/configuration is interpreting the RFC:
<quote>
2.1.1. Line Length Limits
There are two limits that this standard places on
the number of
characters in a line. Each line of characters MUST
be no more than
998 characters, and SHOULD be no more than 78 characters,
excluding
the CRLF.
...
The more conservative 78 character recommendation
is to accommodate
the many implementations of user interfaces that
display these
messages which may truncate, or disastrously wrap,
the display of
more than 78 characters per line, in spite of the
fact that such
implementations are non-conformant to the intent
of this
specification (and that of [RFC2821] if they actually
cause
information to be lost). Again, even though this
limitation is put on
messages, it is encumbant upon implementations which
display messages
...
</quote>
Mailman doesn't appear to fool with the line breaks in email sent to
it for
redistribution. Its internal archiver also appears to behave sensibly
when
processing long line into HTML archives files by only word wrapping
long
lines on white space to a reasonable length so that the <PRE> tagged
message text displays sensibly with a web browser. So your long URL
would
survive intact transit through and archiving by MM. It certainly does
on my
MM system.
Sendmail can be configured to limit line length so some MTA through
which
your mail is passing could be limiting line length though usually it
will
be to the 990 character limit.
The MUA from whence the long URL originated is possible culprit.
The fact is that the RFC admits the possibility of line length manipulation
by Mail Agents although it could be regarded as anti-social to use
the 78
char limit. The only way to ensure line break changes do not corrupt
your
data is to base64 encode it; not the most convenient solution, I grant
you.
------------------------------------------------------
Mailman-Users mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Mailman FAQ: http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py
Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/
--
----------------------------------------------------------
Sign up now for Quotes of the Day, a handful of quotations
on a theme delivered every morning.
Enlightenment! Daily, for free!
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?subject=Subscribe_QOTD
For web hosting and maintenance,
visit Van's home page: http://www.domainvanhorn.com/van/
----------------------------------------------------------
