Mailing list email lines broken at 990 chars

[ryandesign (Ryan Carsten Schmidt)]

​I sent an email to the list with a paragraph of text that was longer than 1000 characters. Email standards dictate that no line in an email should exceed 1000 characters (according to RFC 821), but I sent with Mail.app from Snow Leopard, which of course is aware of this requirement and wraps lines at far less than this. Looks like Mail.app ensures lines are no longer than 74 characters long, including the overhead of the quoted-printable encoding it uses. In my Sent box, the source of the content of the message looks like this:

On Jul 17, 2010, at 23:00, Ryan Schmidt wrote:

> Once MacPorts is installed, which it sounds like you've done, you can =
install a port like autopano-sift-c by simply typing:
>=20
> sudo port install autopano-sift-c

I should point out that in most cases MacPorts is not installing =
pre-built software; it is actually building the software on your =
machine. For some ports, this can take more time than you may be used =
to, especially if your computer is older or not very fast. Many ports =
will install in seconds or a few minutes, but I see, for example, that =
autopano-sift-c depends on cmake, and that hugin-app depends on boost; =
these are large programs that may require 30 or 60 minutes or more to =
build, depending on your computer. Normally you won't get any feedback =
about what's going on either; the last line displayed in the Terminal =
will be something like "--->  Building cmake", and you may get the =
impression after awhile that MacPorts has crashed or frozen, but this is =
almost always not the case. You can use Activity Monitor (in =
/Applications/Utilities) to see whether your computer is busy; usually =
you will see at least one CPU meter doing something, indicating things =
are proceeding along. Just wait awhile and let it finish; on modern =
Macs, most ports will install within a couple hours, most in much less =
time, but a port like hugin-app which I believe ends up having a total =
of 73 dependencies that need to be installed may still take awhile.

However, when the copy of the message arrived from the list server, the source of the content of the message looks like this:

On Jul 17, 2010, at 23:00, Ryan Schmidt wrote:

> Once MacPorts is installed, which it sounds like you've done, you can install a port like autopano-sift-c by simply typing:
> 
> sudo port install autopano-sift-c

I should point out that in most cases MacPorts is not installing pre-built software; it is actually building the software on your machine. For some ports, this can take more time than you may be used to, especially if your computer is older or not very fast. Many ports will install in seconds or a few minutes, but I see, for example, that autopano-sift-c depends on cmake, and that hugin-app depends on boost; these are large programs that may require 30 or 60 minutes or more to build, depending on your computer. Normally you won't get any feedback about what's going on either; the last line displayed in the Terminal will be something like "--->  Building cmake", and you may get the impression after awhile that MacPorts has crashed or frozen, but this is almost always not the case. You can use Activity Monitor (in /Applications/Utilities) to see whether your computer is busy; usually you will see at least one CPU meter doing something, indicating things are proceeding along. Ju
 st wait awhile and let it finish; on modern Macs, most ports will install within a couple hours, most in much less time, but a port like hugin-app which I believe ends up having a total of 73 dependencies that need to be installed may still take awhile.


_______________________________________________
macports-users mailing list
macports-users@lists.macosforge.org
http://lists.macosforge.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/macports-users

The mailing list server has taken away the incoming quoted-printable encoding, and replaced it with no encoding at all, resulting in the mail server receiving a line that was longer than 1000 characters, and the mail server decided to insert a newline at 990 characters (as is ​apparently common practice for some email servers like qmail -- the headers don't indicate what mail server software is used so I don't know if you're using qmail or merely something that's acting similarly). The result is that when I read this email in my mail program, the word "Just" appears as "Ju st".

When viewed in the mailing list archive as per the link above, there is no problem.

What can we do to let the mailing list system send emails that are not unintentionally reformatted like this?

[raimue (Rainer Müller)]

Without having tested this again, I am confident our current setup will not modify the mail body in any way as we took special care not to do that in order to avoid breaking DKIM.