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What's up with all those equals signs anyway?

lars.ingebrigtsen.no

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Re: What's up with all those equals signs anyway?

#41

Post by direwolf20 »

tiborsaas wrote: post #20

> We see that that’s a quite a long line. Mail servers don’t like that Why do mail server care about how long a line is? Why don't they just let the client reading the mail worry about wrapping the lines?

SMTP is a line–based protocol, including the part that transfers the message body

The server needs to parse the message headers, so it can't be an opaque blob. If the client uses IMAP, the server needs to fully parse the message. The only alternative is POP3, where the client downloads all messages as blobs and you can only read your email from one location, which made sense in the year 2000 but not now when everyone has several devices.

Re: What's up with all those equals signs anyway?

#44

Post by direwolf20 »

dgan wrote: post #8
quibono wrote: post #6

CLRF vs LF strikes again. Partly at least. I wonder why even have a max line length limit in the first place? I.e. is this for a technical reason or just display related?

I am just wondering how it is good idea for a sever to insert some characters into user's input. If a collegue were to propose this, i d laugh in his face It's just sp hacky i cant belive it's a real life's solution

It's called escaping, and almost every protocol has it. HN must convert the & symbol to & for displaying in HTML. Many wire protocols like SATA or Ethernet must insert a 1 after a certain number of consecutive 0s to maintain electrical balance. Don't remember which ones — don't quote me that it's SATA and Ethernet.

Re: What's up with all those equals signs anyway?

#48

Post by liveoneggs »

codingdave wrote: post #31
tiborsaas wrote: post #20

> We see that that’s a quite a long line. Mail servers don’t like that Why do mail server care about how long a line is? Why don't they just let the client reading the mail worry about wrapping the lines?

Keep in mind that in ye olden days, email was not a worldwide communication method. It was more typical for it to be an internal-only mail system, running on whatever legacy mainframe your org had, and working within whatever constraints that forced. So in the 90s when the internet began to expand, and email to external organizations became a bigger thing, you were just as concerned with compatibility with all those…

This is incorrect

Re: What's up with all those equals signs anyway?

#49

Post by xg15 »

I'm just wondering why this problem shows up now. Why do lots of people suddenly post their old emails with a defective QP decoder?

> For some reason or other, people have been posting a lot of excerpts from old emails on Twitter over the last few days.

On the risk of having missed the latest meme or social media drama, but does anyone know what this "some reason or other" is?

Edit: Question answered.

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