Re: [Mailman-Users] Blank Characters Removed from "Subject:" Line
Barry Finkel writes:
I am running Mailman 2.1.9. I have a list where one posting has a "Subject:" line:
Change in Procedure for Computers on list with possible Antivirus ProblemsThe next posting in the thread has:
Change in Procedure for Computers on list with possible AntivirusProblems
and "Stephen J. Turnbull" stephen@xemacs.org replied:
What is happening, I guess, is that Mailman is folding that header to keep it within some number of characters, maybe 76 or so. RFC 2822 specifies that this may be done by inserting a linebreak (CRLF) before whitespace. The RFC implies that the right thing to do in that case is to remove the CRLF only, but some MUAs also remove a space. I suspect that is what is happening to this case.
Can you post a copy of the "raw" header as received by Mailman and as sent by Mailman?
Below are pieces of two messages. I have the original message from the archives of the sender followed by the relevant lines of the list .mbox file (including line numbers).
======================================================================= -----Original Message----- From: ... Sent: Tuesday, June 26, 2007 2:30 PM To: ... Subject: RE: Change in Procedure for Computers on list with possible AntivirusProblems
Not a question ...
184331 Subject: RE: Change in Procedure for Computers on list with possible 184332 AntivirusProblems 184333 Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2007 14:29:52 -0500 184342 From: ... 184343 To: ...
184358 184359 Not a question ...
=======================================================================
-----Original Message----- From: ... Sent: Tuesday, June 26, 2007 3:50 PM To: ... Cc: ... Subject: RE: Change in Procedure for Computers on list withpossibleAntivirusProblems
Hi ...
184735 Subject: RE: Change in Procedure for Computers on list 184736 withpossibleAntivirusProblems 184737 Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2007 15:50:20 -0500 184747 From: ... 184748 To: ... 184751 Cc: ...
184765 184766 Hi ...
=======================================================================
In both cases, I do not see that Mailman has removed any blanks from the "Subject:" line.
Barry S. Finkel Computing and Information Systems Division Argonne National Laboratory Phone: +1 (630) 252-7277 9700 South Cass Avenue Facsimile:+1 (630) 252-4601 Building 222, Room D209 Internet: BSFinkel@anl.gov Argonne, IL 60439-4828 IBMMAIL: I1004994
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Barry Finkel wrote:
Below are pieces of two messages. I have the original message from the archives of the sender followed by the relevant lines of the list .mbox file (including line numbers).
======================================================================= -----Original Message----- From: ... Sent: Tuesday, June 26, 2007 2:30 PM To: ... Subject: RE: Change in Procedure for Computers on list with possible AntivirusProblems
This is some rendering of the Subject:, but it is not the actual Subject: header. If it were, the Subject: of the outgoing message would be simply
Subject: RE: Change in Procedure for Computers on list with possible
since a header continuation must begin with at least one whitespace character. You need to get the 'message source' from the sender.
Not a question ...
184331 Subject: RE: Change in Procedure for Computers on list with possible 184332 AntivirusProblems
And here we see Mailman has sent the post with the subject folded with a <tab> as the whitespace character.
184333 Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2007 14:29:52 -0500 184342 From: ... 184343 To: ...
184358 184359 Not a question ...
=======================================================================
-----Original Message----- From: ... Sent: Tuesday, June 26, 2007 3:50 PM To: ... Cc: ... Subject: RE: Change in Procedure for Computers on list withpossibleAntivirusProblems
And someones MUA has dropped the <tab> in unfolding (and this has happened more than once)
I think it would be better if Mailman folded using <sp> rather than <tab> since with <tab> a standards compliant unfolding would leave a <tab> in the middle of the subject which may be worse than dropping it.
But, the fact remains that there are many commonly used MUAs that drop a whitespace character in unfolding and there's not much we can do about that.
Mark Sapiro msapiro@value.net The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
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Mark Sapiro writes:
But, the fact remains that there are many commonly used MUAs that drop a whitespace character in unfolding and there's not much we can do about that.
I wonder if they're better with RFC 2047. That is, suppose we rendered
Subject: Pretend this is a long field
as
Subject: Pretend this is =?US-ASCII?Q?a=20?= =?US-ASCII?Q?long=20field?=
Of course, that would be just unbearably ugly if your MUA doesn't do MIME headers.
Maybe the best course would be to use two spaces at the beginning of a folded physical line.
participants (3)
-
Barry Finkel -
Mark Sapiro -
Stephen J. Turnbull