[X4U] Why do some images not go through on Apple Mail?

[Doug McNutt]

At 22:22 -0500 4/24/08, Ed Gould wrote:
>On Apr 24, 2008, at 8:27 PM, Crandon David wrote:
>
>> Hmm...not sure why you have to go through all that hassle. I'm  using 10.4.11, and Mail Version 2.1.3 (753.1/753), however, I've  been able to just type or copy/paste since 10.3. #!
>>
>> Here's a link I typed:
>>
>> http://www.cnn.com
>>
>> did it come through OK?

In plain text messages Apple mail uses format flowed but it adds a newer "feature" that got into the RFC's. It's a demand that the receiving client delete spaces that appear at the ends of wrapped lines. It will be in the Content-type: header as "delsp = yes".

The result is that long URL's - not short ones as the above - that have been wrapped to 72 characters with the syntax for format-flowed wind up with a space in them if the receiving mail client - Eudora for instance - doesn't support the delsp request.

In HTML messages links can be anchors that use an href="http;//something.com" construction in which spaces at the ends of lines are totally ignored because of HTML specifications. They can also show a name in blue that has nothing to do with the link itself; that's useful for phishing expeditions but not much else.

I haven't looked at all mail clients but Apple mail is the only one I know about that requires recipients to honor the delsp=yes command. It's just too easy to remove the spaces during the line wrapping process. The limit for mail transport via SMTP is 998 8-bit characters in a line. There is hardly any reason these days for format-flowed. When is the last time you saw an ASR-33 teletype or Flexowriter receiving mail?

<http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3676.txt>

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