<<< Date Index >>>     <<< Thread Index >>>

Re: stuff_all_quoted



On 2006-08-16, William Yardley <mutt-dev@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 16, 2006 at 07:46:08PM -0400, Kyle Wheeler wrote:
> 
> >> Can Vim handle all of these requirements reliably? I can think of a
> >> lot of scenarios where the user could pretty easily accidentally
> >> cause vim to generate bogus flowed text, causing a lot of problems.
> >> Honestly, I have given a quick try to "fo+=w" in vim, and it doesn't
> >> really seem to do anything special.
> 
> > The real fun begins when you add 'a' to your format options as well.
> > It's a highly convenient way to edit text that you want line-wrapped.
> 
> Weird - I thought I tried that before and it never did what I thought it
> was. Seems to work now, though.
> 
> Here's another problem....
> If I set $text_flowed, and UNset $stuff_all_quoted (so mutt should be
> behaving like stock mutt w/ $text_flowed set), responding to a normally
> quoted message like:
> 
> On Wed, Aug 16, 2006 at 05:39:58PM -0700, Will Yardley wrote:
> > On Wed, Aug 16, 2006 at 05:38:22PM -0700, Someone Else wrote:
> 
> > > Blah blah blah blah stuff here
> 
> >  Some other text here
> 
> And some other text here
> 
> It shows up in my editor as:
> 
> On Wed, Aug 16, 2006 at 05:45:59PM -0700, Will Yardley wrote:
> >On Wed, Aug 16, 2006 at 05:39:58PM -0700, Will Yardley wrote:
> >> On Wed, Aug 16, 2006 at 05:38:22PM -0700, Someone Else wrote:
> > 
> >> > Blah blah blah blah stuff here
> 
> >>  Some other text here
> 
> >And some other text here
> 
> Note the line that is:
> 
> >> >
> instead of
> >>>
> 
> Wouldn't that be a bug?

No.  This is the sort of problem I was afraid we were going to get
into; it's a case where what you think the message contains is not
what RFC 2646 says it contains.  (I'm going to indent the following
by four spaces to set it off and maybe avoid corruption.)  The line

    > > Blah blah blah blah stuff here

in a format=flowed message is considered quoted to a depth of one by
the leading '>' and to have been space-stuffed with a single space.
(See sections 4.2 and 4.5 of the RFC.)  The text is then

    > Blah blah blah blah stuff here

(no leading space).  As far as RFC 2646 is concerned, that text has
no further quoting--the quoting has been removed--the text just
happens to start with a '>'.

When that line is included, and quoted, in a reply, its quote depth
is increased to two.  When the reply is "generated" (to use the
RFC's term), that line is first space-stuffed to prevent the leading
'>' from being later interpreted as quoting instead of text.  It is
then quoted to a depth of two, so that it appears in the outgoing
message as

    >> > Blah blah blah blah stuff here

just as you observed.

>                         That would mean that once I respond, the quoting
> in the message would be all screwed up.

Well, that depends on your definition of screwing up, vis-a-vis
quoting with fidelity.

>                                         And how can mutt really reliably
> "know" when text from a non-flowed message is quoted and when it's not.

It can't.  Format=flowed quoting is well defined; everything else is
just convention.

> I can also imagine a situation like responding to a message with a (2
> level deep) quoted, escaped "^From" - that would end up quoting
> something like:
> 
> > > >From
> 
> as
> 
> >>>> From (4 levels deep)
> 
> instead of
> 
> >>> From (3 levels deep)

If that first line is in a format=flowed message, it is quoted to a
depth of one.

> (I know that Mozilla / Thunderbird has had some problems kind of similar
> to this in the past - it's difficult to deal with weird situations when
> quoting messages that aren't format=flowed).

Exactly.

>                                              But unfortunately, if mutt
> wants to try to implement format=flowed support, I think it makes sense
> for the program to try and do the best job it can at "guessing" whether
> parts of a non-flowed message are quoted when quoting it.

I don't think mutt should be guessing.  You are free to edit a
message in your editor any way you like.  If you want to have your
editor guess at quoting levels and reformat replies per those
guesses, that's fine too.  But I don't think mutt should be
reformatting anything except as allowed by Internet standards.

Regards,
Gary

-- 
Gary Johnson                               | Agilent Technologies
garyjohn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx                   | Wireless Division
http://www.spocom.com/users/gjohnson/mutt/ | Spokane, Washington, USA