OK, the more you run over a dead cat, the flatter it gets; but...

Mark R. Williamson wrote:
> At 5:11 PM -0600 2/19/97, Theodore Hua wrote:
> >        This sounds like MIME/quoted-printable.  The "=3D" are hex
> >representations for spaces.  I don't recall what "=20" represents though.
>
> Close "=20" is a space, used at line wrap points. "=3D" is "=".

In "quoted-printable" and some others, the "=20" is more specifically a
"non-breaking space" in this context.  Some mailers throw out entire
paragraphs without any line breaks (using automatic line-wrap in their
client) and assume the receiving mailer is configured to "auto wrap"
the oversized lines to fit their window.  Thus it works somewhat like
HTML in that the paragraphs adjust to the particular window.  But as we
should all well know, the real world of e-mail doesn't work like that.

When the output record size is "artificially" line-wrapped at a maximum
limit, "quoted-printable" (and RTF and some others) tack on that
trailing space in escaped format (=20) so that any "intelligent" (sp)
mail readers won't concatenate the trailing word of the line with the
first word of the next line while "stripping newlines to reformat the
text to fit your window".

The "=" is escaped (=3D) because the "=" is the "escape" character for
quoted printable format (like "&" in HTML).  You'll also see escaped
characters often in quotes (to fake left/right quotes) and other special
chars in the message.

Newfangled, commercial mail systems may "look" pretty when sending
messages within your local network, but they haven't yet picked up a
clue on the impact on the Internet.  MS Exchange, Netscape Communicator,
you name it; they cause innumerable problems.  How many WINMAIL.DAT
attachments do you put up with per week?

Yes, I'm using Netscape 3.1 mailer now, but my settings are changed to
the most generic ones possible.  It helps to "hide" some of the noise
received from mail such as we are discussing (Netscape does receive
and process most of this nonsense, but hopefully doesn't propagate it
in my messages).

Much of this can also be in the user's "SMTP gateway" and not entirely
their fault.  In general, the more expensive the mail client and/or
gateway, the more problems it causes in Internet mail.  The originating
user and/or management is, under the circumstances, not completely open
to fielding complaints about their new expensive "toy".

However, with the onslaught of commercial, whizz-bang mailers recently,
I don't expect the problem to get any better.

Jeff Kell <[log in to unmask]> utc.edu postmaster/listserv administrator