The recent exchange about UUCP messages (with a sample), prompted me to
recall a suggestion I had made a while ago (I don't remember where, so
it might be new to this audience) about how mailers in bitnet should deal
with lines of length > 80.  My suggestion is this: any line of length > 80
should be split up into pieces, the first of length 80, and subsequent
pieces of length 79 (or less).  The first character on the second and
succeeding lines should be a backspace.  Since it is impossible for text
files to have that combination (or highly unlikely, since nothing is really
impossible), this shouldn't have any impact on existing files, and would
be trivial to put back together or create.
                      Victor