Re: [Nmh-workers] 78 column limit

[Jon Steinhart]

address@hidden writes:
> Ralph Corderoy <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> > Well, if this hypothetical utility existed it would have certainly flagged
> >your message as violating the >78 column limit :-)
> 
> That's disconcerting. For more than a decade now, the default for my editor
> was for no line wrapping. I inserted new lines to generate my own
> formatting. But some recipients complained that my Emails are "jagged". This
> was caused by their Email client inserting its own line endings.
> 
> So I gave up trying to control the format in which recipients see my Email.
> Just last week, I wrote the code to make line wrapping be the default
> whenever I'm editing a file in my drafts folder whose name is all digits.
> 
> So... do I conform to standards or make my my recipients unhappy? In passing
> I note that almost all the Email I get, not from address@hidden, has
> very long lines.
> 
>     Norman Shapiro

Someone else can probably say this more clearly, but the line limit is the
"transmitted" limit.  This means that it applies to text/plain.  If you get
messages with different encodings they can encode longer lines such that the
transmitted lines are not longer than 78 characters.

Jon