[Email-SIG] header folding

[Glenn Linderman]

On 7/26/2011 5:38 AM, R. David Murray wrote:
> What's the word for what is done when a text message is made to have
> a line length of less than 78 by using quoted printable (or base64)
> encoding?  Is that also folding?  If there's no existing term in common
> use, folding would make sense to me.  So I have no objection to using
> 'fold' consistently in the api and code for these operations.

To me, "fold" means to divide _a_ long line into multiple short lines 
(less than line length).  (Barry calls this split, it seems.)

To me, "wrap" means to divide and join as necessary a set of lines 
(sometimes/often a paragraph) to achieve some number of similar length 
lines, not to exceed a line length limit, with possibly a shorter one at 
the end.

To me, "fill" means to divide and join as necessary a set of lines 
(sometimes/often a paragraph) to use as few lines as possible without 
exceeding a line length limit, usually resulting in a shorter one at the 
end. (Barry seems to have this same definition.)

For all the above, all divisions and joinings happen at white space 
sequences, and white space sequences are considered irrelevant in 
composition, and are generally reduced to a single space or newline as a 
side effect.

I think that if these terms are defined in the RFCs, that those 
definitions should be preferred to mine.

Some set of definitions needs to be agreed upon, before sensible 
communication can be made about what various algorithms should actually 
do, and what policy settings might be named, and what algorithms they 
would invoke.
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