Ok, lots and lots of great feedback and ideas here for consideration. Thank you.
Bottom line is.... Does anyone know a way, or a trick, or a tag, etc. which I could use on a long URL string that would +_guarantee it not be parsed into morsels when displayed on the recipients monitor ? Maybe there is no way to accomplish this, I don't know, but it's such a fundamental issue, it's hard to believe that the current crop of email client apps don't deal with long URL's in a much better way. This is fundamental. Oh well, Any ideas, greatly appreciated. Thanks for all the terrific responses. John .........Quality is a result of intelligent effort. On Wednesday, June 4, 2003 at 1:06 AM, Raul Vera wrote: >Raul Vera wrote: >>>> >>>>Word wrapping cannot be disabled. [...] See RFC 822 >>>> >[...] >> >>[...] RFC 822 [...] says that long _header_ >>lines _may_ be folded, but explicitly says that the format of the >>_content_ of a message is not covered. [...] Of course, a more recent >RFC might have >>something else to say (822 is from 1982). >> > >The relevant RFC is actually 2822, which is intended to supercede 822 but >is still a proposed internet standard, not a standard. It states that >content lines SHOULD (their caps) be wrapped at 78 characters, to avoid >display problems. This strikes me as wrong, as it is automatic wrapping >that often _causes_ display problems. I much prefer the approach in RFC >2646 (also a proposed internet standard), which adds a completely >backward-compatible format=flowed parameter to the text/plain MIME type, >inserting soft wrapping that looks like hard wrapping to non-conforming >clients but allows conforming clients to rewrap on display. Among its >wrapping-for-display rules it suggests that single words that exceed the >wrapping length _not_ be cut. This would seem to be a much more >appropriate policy for a URL, even while hard wrapping per RFC 2822. > >So I would request that CTM do the following: >-) Never wrap except at white space, even if single "words" exceed 78 >characters, because wrapping isn't required and is done only for display >reasons. Cutting long words, which are almost invariably URLs, doesn't >improve their display, and usually breaks them. This will fix most, but >not all, URLs broken by wrapping. >-) Allow user control over wrapping, with separate controls over typed >text, forwards, and quotations. The defaults would reflect the current >behaviour. >-) Implement RFC 2646. > >In fact, given that Powermail is attempting to avoid multi-media bloat >and remain a really fast and lightweight plain-text mailer, I think it is >particularly important that the handling of plain text be as powerful as >possible. RFC 2646 looks to me to be a very good fit. > >Raúl > >P.S. www.rfc-editor.org is the official RFC site. > >-- >Raúl Vera >Director >Orbit 3 Pty Ltd >8 Coneill Place >NSW 2037 >Australia > > > > >
