format fucked

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From: Nicholas Clark
Subject: format fucked
Date: 18:06 on 30 Jun 2004

I hates format fucked. Which claims it merely "flows" messages to make them
look nice, and claims that it can be undone 100% by the recipient.

But there is hateful culpable stupidity here. Examine the RFC closely:

  http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2646.html

Section 4.4 - space stuffing

  "Other lines MAY be space-stuffed as desired" by the sender's MUA

Or may not.

So if my MUA receives a format fucked message, and the line starts with
a space, how does it know if that space was part of the original
(pre fucking) message, or a space stuffed buy the format fucker? IT
CAN'T. So it has to strip it, on the assumption that it's a stuffing space.
This isn't 100% reversibility.

And so the grand tradition of inlining source code patches in plain text goes
out of the window.

I think someone had stuffing between their ears when they wrote this RFC.
The flowwit. I hates all the mal user agents that uses this.

Nicholas Clark

format fucked Nicholas Clark 18:06 on 30 Jun 2004

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