Eric Thomas <ERIC@FRECP11>
Sun, 13 Dec 1987 19:29 SET
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I would like to suggest that mail gateways expanded all tabs in the RFC822
header before forwarding the mail into BITNET. It is difficult to say whether
EBCDIC software that doesn't support "tabs" are a violation of RFC822 or not,
since what is commonly (and incorrectly) called "tab" in EBCDIC (PT, Program
Tab - X'05') does not have the same meaning as the ASCII tab. For example, if
you send such a tab to a 3270 device, it will move the cursor to the next
field in the data stream, which will most likely be the next screen line but
could be just anything else. If you TYPE a file containing a tab, it gets
translated into a blank. Anyway, it is not clear whether an EBCDIC PT can be
considered as LWSP or not, and it is certainly safer to expand it than to
leave it "as is". The same applies to quoted CR or LF: they should be
translated into spaces before being sent out. There is no CR nor LF in EBCDIC:
there is only a NL character (New Line) which is a combination of CR+LF, so a
quoted CR or a quoted LF don't have any meaning on an EBCDIC machine and can
only cause problems. A quoted CRLF could be translated into a NL, though.
Meanwhile I'll change the LISTSERV routines to translate PT into a blank
before parsing the header.
Eric
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