[X4U] Clickable URL's and addresses in emails

[Doug McNutt]

At 17:15 +1100 8/23/07, Brett Conlon wrote:
>The long of the short of it is that I'll tell her to stick to using <xxx> and if someone can't click on it it's probably coz their mail client doesn't make them clickable.

There is a nasty problem associated with that method that shows up in Apple's mail.app. For example:

At 09:14 +0100 8/23/07, Chris  wrote, and I trimmed:
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed
>Date: Thu, 23 Aug 2007 09:14:17 +0100
>To: scitech at lists.apple.com
>
><x - flowed>Hi,
>
>As others have said the X11 is on the Mac OS X install CD. But you 
>should be able to download it here http://www.apple.com/support/
>downloads/x11formacosx.html
>

(And note that the URL given is for 10.3 only!!!)

Note the "delsp=yes" in the Content-Type header. It's a rather new feature documented in RFC 3676 (2004) that comes well after the definition of format=flowed which in turn is a way of sending paragraphs instead of fixed-width lines while not offending mail clients of the teletype age that can't handle the 998 characters that are now allowed. Delsp requests that the receiving mail client remove "extra" spaces that appear after a return character that was added only to break paragraphs into short segments for transmission.

When my mail client, Eudora 5.1, receives the text of the message it ignores the delsp request and the URL acquires a space that shouldn't be there. It happens even if the URL is enclosed in <> brackets which are not present in this example.

Apple mail could remove the space before it sends out the mail but it doesn't. Apple mail could allow one to decline use of format-flowed with the limitation that a paragraph must never exceed 998 characters. I haven't found a preference to do that. The result is that Apple mail is simply not compatible with older email clients.

I once wrote some code in perl that would address SMTP on port 25 of my server and send out long lines that would allow URL's to pass unmodified. The fellow I was working with found that too difficult and he now passes all of his URL's - 30 or so in each daily message - through tinyurl.com so they look like this <http://tinyurl.com/2n7oo6> Because they are always short they never get wrapped. Personally I dislike it because of malware possibilities; I like to know where I'm going when I poke a URL But <http://tinyurl.com> is worth a visit.

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