[Info-vax] Writer advice requested

[JF Mezei]

Richard B. Gilbert wrote:

> I have seen ONE message that came through as a single line about 700 
> characters long.  I have been reading and posting news for more than 
> twenty years.

Modern news/mail clients automatically wrap paragraphs into the window
size. So when someone sends their email/post in a "microsoft" format of
1 line per paragraphs, if you use a moder client, you don't realise it
was sent in a microsoft way because your client will flow the text.

However, a compliant sender client who insists on 1 line per paragraph
will break the lines at around 72 characters and end them with the =
sign as part of the Mime encoding.

The client reconstucts the 1 long line from the multiple source lines,
and then reflows it in the client's window.

There have been clients however who will send those microsoft 1 line per
paragraph unencoded and will truly put 700 characters in a single line.
So for Mr VAXman who uses ancient software, for the mime encoded
1-line/paragraph, he will see 72-80 character lines ended with =.
But for thsoe cases where the message isn't properly encoded, he will
really see a single line with 700 characters on it.