Re: Weird quoted-printable messages from Outlook
On 2006-01-24 at 00:41 -0800, Gary Johnson wrote:
> I've been receiving a lot of messages from Outlook users in the last
> year or so that contain extra blank lines. For example, the
> greeting is separated from the first paragraph by three blank lines
> instead of the usual one; paragraphs are separated from each other
> by three blank lines instead of one; signature blocks are double-
> spaced rather than single-spaced.
And there's the " =" at the end of the lines inside a paragraph. This
is format=flowed text, see RFC 2646. That RFC also states a policy of
"SHOULD NOT" be used with quoted-printable, though:
> I 1 <no description> [multipa/alternativ, 7bit, 9.3K]
> I 2 |-><no description> [text/plain, quoted, us-ascii, 2.0K]
> I 3 `-><no description> [text/html, quoted, us-ascii, 7.0K]
*coughs*
> ------_=_NextPart_001_01C6130A.C7998636
> Content-Type: text/plain;
> charset="us-ascii"
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Missing format=flowed and is misusing the CTE; however in fairness I
should point out that RFC2646 was written "after the fact" in 1999, but
it was written to address the sorts of maverick incompatibilities
introduced by a certain vendor's email products.
> Hi,
>
> =20
>
> This is a paragraph of text that doesn't mean anything =
> but just occupies space for this example.
>
> =20
>
> Regards,
The =20 is creating a flowed line as a separate paragraph, so it's
putting in an empty paragraph; I can well believe that if the default is
to render paragraphs with no extra vertical spacing (HTML-alike), this
is how a client might choose to internally construct its data to
introduce a blank line. Rather disgusting hack that shouldn't be
exposed to other clients by being sent on-the-wire, though.
Someone else said that turning off the HTML alternate fixes this; that
ties in neatly with this; the <p></p> for HTML-spacing is being
converted to a blank like this.
If you can't get the Outlook users upgraded to a version which either
generates better plain-text or emits format=flowed (if there is such a
version) then you're probably best off binding a key to a macro to edit
the content-type of the current part to set format=flowed.
To see if that would actually fix things, in the attachments menu use
Ctrl-E to <edit-type> and then put this: ; format="flowed"
on the end of the type. Then view. If it's still displaying badly, I
can't help you.
If that fixes things, then perhaps this, which assumes that there is no
previous format parameter on the MIME-type (put an unused keysymbol of
your choice in for the 'X'):
macro attach,pager X "<edit-type><eol>; format=\"flowed\"\n"
Please let me know if that does help work-around things.
--
I am keeping international relations on a peaceable footing.
You are biding your time before acting.
He is coddling tyrants.
-- Roger BW on topic of verb conjugation