[X4U] APPLE's Mail Program

[Ed Gould]

On Jan 1, 2008, at 7:30 AM, Daly Jessup wrote:
> ---------------SNIP-------------------------
> They don't sound like a fun bunch! But it's strange that they would  
> say to use brackets and then object. It makes me wonder if you did  
> something I have seen from time to time:  might you have put the  
> URL in brackets but omitted the "http"?  I've seen people trying to  
> do the right thing, posting a URL like this:
>
> <www.google.com>
>
> Of course, that doesn't work, even though they used brackets. THIS  
> would work:
>
> <http://www.google.com>
>
> Might that have been what happened?
>
> Daly
>

Daly:

I did try your suggestion and the APPLE mailer still broke the URL. I  
got chastised for this as well.  Just to give the group the flavor of  
the list, I am enclosing a portion of one complaint:
Of course when it shows up in my mailbox APPLE Mail seems to put it  
back together and I get a good URL
--------

But, PKB (sort of)  The "resume" URL, as it appears on, e.g.:

     http://bama.ua.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0712&L=ibm-main&P=R87955

... gives "404 Not Found" from Lynx, Firefox, probably many
others because of the trailing '>'.  An excerpt from the
HTML source is:

...see &lt;<a href="http://patriot.net/~+shmuel/resume/ 
brief.html&amp;gt;">http...

There's a similar problem in URLs appearing in messages from
Ed F. and dasdbill; perhaps from others using AOL.COM, because
of a trailing ')' or '_'.

And Ed G. suggested in frustration that you, not he, submit a
PMR on Apple's Mail program.  Well, one thing I _do_ like about
IBM is that I can submit PMRs (when IBMLink is working); they're
answered; sometimes they're even fixed.  I have lots of problems
with Apple's Mail; almost as many with Thunderbird.  They try
to be impossibly smart -- "Content-type: text/plain;format=flowed"
is oxymoronic: "format=flowed" means it contains markup, and
if it contains markup, it's not plain.

If I post messages on ********** web interface, I never have
URL wrapping problems.

I've got "mutt" built and stumbling on my MacBook and Solaris;
I need to <gasp> get sendmail/postfix configured on the MacBook,
then I can use mutt and not worry about URL wrapping.  I guess
I'm an Email Luddite.

RFC 1738 contains a recommendation (not a standard) for

     "APPENDIX: Recommendations for URLs in Context"

... the URL should be surrounded by "<URL:" and ">", and the
processor should ignore linear and vertical whitespace.
Example:

     <URL: http:// www . ietf . org/
           rfc/
           rfc1738.txt >

... ought to work.  This convention is not widely respected,
but wouldn't it be nice if LISTSERV implemented it?
--------------------

Ed