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Todd:
In lugnet.admin.suggestions, Todd Lehman wrote:
> In lugnet.admin.suggestions, Wayne Gramlich wrote:
> > Unfortunately, the design of FTX is somewhat flawed when it comes to
> > standard news and mail readers. Enclosing a URL in angle brackets <...>
> > is a hint to most news/mail readers that a long URL that spans more than
> > one line should be reassembled by compressing out any whitespace.
>
> Have you seen a news/mail reader that actually implements that behavior?
Yes. Mozilla does. I'm 99% sure that Eudora does as well. I'm quite sure
that there are many others. Since I do not run Microsoft products, I have
no idea what they do.
> I don't believe that behavior is even defined in any RFC, is it???
> I've heard about line-joining before, but only with the notation
>
> <URL:url>
The relevant RFC is RFC1738 in the appendix. Alas, most people find
the <URL:url> syntax to be ugly and simplify it to simply <url>. This is one
of those situations where the RFC says X, people do Y, and the programmers
choose to bow to the defacto standard Y.
> > There is essentially no chance that mail/news readers will ever switch
> > over to FTX conventions. The most prudent coarse of action would be
> > to modify to FTX to peacefully coexist with standard mail/news readers.
>
> But it was designed to peacefully coexist that already.
Alas, it does not. Please do not take this as a pot shot at FTX. I think FTX
is a rather well thought out. Unfortunately, it did not anticipate the defacto
standard of how to encode URL's into E-mail to not follow the official standard
in the RFC1738 appendix.
> > Since I do not know who designed FTX,
>
> It came out of talks in lugnet.admin.general and lugnet.faq in 1999.
>
> > I have no idea how feasible it is to modifiy the FTX specification to
> > correct this problem.
>
> Changing it wouldn't really be feasible, unless there were some real issues
> with mail/news clients interpreting the links incorrectly.
The issues are there. If you do some Google searches with works like
"URL", "email", and "angle brackets" you will run across plenty of people
recommend enclosing URL's in angle brackets and they do not mention
<URL:url> syntax.
Here's some URL's:
<http://www.webfoot.com/advice/email.format.html?Email>
<http://gmunch.home.pipeline.com/typo-L/faq/faq.htm>
<http://www.mantex.co.uk/samples/elec.htm>
<http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/design/2003-March/002211.html>
I think it may be time to do a little FTX redesign, since the mail readers
and news readers that already implement angle bracketed URL's are
extremely unlikely to change.
My $.02,
-Wayne
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Message has 1 Reply:
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| (...) What an strange and unfortunate outcome. (...) Thanks for the links. (...) I think you're right. Eudora isn't known for strict adherence to SMTP/NNTP standards, but Mozilla is a totally different story. If this is confusing a modern-day (...) (21 years ago, 17-Jun-03, to lugnet.admin.suggestions, lugnet.admin.nntp)
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| (...) Have you seen a news/mail reader that actually implements that behavior? I don't believe that behavior is even defined in any RFC, is it??? I've heard about line-joining before, but only with the notation <URL:url> (...) But it was designed to (...) (21 years ago, 16-Jun-03, to lugnet.admin.suggestions)
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