Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site brl-tgr.ARPA Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!sdcsvax!sdcrdcf!hplabs!hao!seismo!brl-tgr!tgr!ALPERN%SJRLVM4.BITNET@WISCVM.ARPA From: David AlpernNewsgroups: net.mail.headers Subject: RFC 934 - Message Encapsulation Message-ID: <8149@brl-tgr.ARPA> Date: Fri, 8-Feb-85 17:33:30 EST Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.8149 Posted: Fri Feb 8 17:33:30 1985 Date-Received: Wed, 13-Feb-85 02:28:53 EST Sender: news@brl-tgr.ARPA Organization: Ballistic Research Lab Lines: 34 I'm bothered by the choice made in the message separator (EB) as described in this document. Most digests currently do hold quite well to a standard of using either 70 or 30 hyphens alone on a line, with a blank line on either side. This is specific enough to avoid confusing user text with separators. Defining a hyphen in the first column of a line, with no other restrictions, as a separator seems like asking for ambiguity. Most front end programs will not be changed to "stuff" mail being sent for the first time, nor will most mail reader software "unstuff". As a proposal, may I suggest a line which starts with 5 hyphens in sequence followed by a space and an asterisk, ends with the reverse, and has a total length of 68. This is much harder for a user to hit randomly, would be easy for the user to avoid, and yet still allows for some text field within the separator. I think it would be worthwhile to define the standard in such a way that mail reading programs could tell, almost without ambiguity, if a message contained embedded messages. Then, depending on the user interface and the user's desires, the system could either break such messages automatically or on user command. Using the single hyphen separator it will be too likely for a single message to get broken at a list bullet or just above a "signature" (notice my own, which I've used this way for ages - if "unstuffed", this hyphen will disappear -and if I forget the space, the file gets split). - Dave David Alpern IBM San Jose Research Laboratory, K65/282 5600 Cottle Road, San Jose, CA 95193 Phone: (408) 284-6521 Bitnet: ALPERN@SJRLVM4 CSnet: ALPERN@IBM-SJ