On 2026-01-29 01:48:07 +0100, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote: > Derek Martin wrote in > <[email protected]>: > |On Tue, Jan 27, 2026 at 08:01:46PM -0500, Kurt Hackenberg wrote: > ... > |> I know of two variants of mbox that don't use Lines: or Content-Length:, \ > |> and > |> do ">From " escaping of only some message lines, not all of them. > ... > | 2. Use the Content-Length header to mark where the message ends > > Why the Content-Length Format is Bad (a humble opinion) > > https://www.jwz.org/doc/content-length.html > > More from 1996 thus. And super current on-topic. > I have expressed Dr. Fink's wishes in the past.
Yes, 1996. But... "This latter format is non-portable, easily-corruptible, and overall, brain-damaged (that's a technical term.)" Non-portable: Fortunately, it matters only locally, and the user can ensure that their tools handle it correctly (in particular, recompute the value when the message is received and whenever it needs to be modified). Easily-corruptible: If the tools handle it correctly, it should not be corrupt (it is probably less risky than the other methods). Brain-damaged: ??? So what was needed was just a transition from old problematic methods to the general use of Content-Length *locally*. But MUAs should still support (old) mbox files where Content-Length is not used. -- Vincent Lefèvre <[email protected]> - Web: <https://www.vinc17.net/> 100% accessible validated (X)HTML - Blog: <https://www.vinc17.net/blog/> Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / Pascaline project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)
