On 05Sep2022 12:56, Kurt Hackenberg <k...@panix.com> wrote:
On Mon, Sep 05, 2022 at 07:40:54PM +1000, Cameron Simpson wrote:
It seems a little conceptually cleaner to have the editor do the
whole job, rather than divide it between the editor and Mutt. But
another complication is that you can edit a message more than once...
I think space stuffing is effectively an escape mechanism, like
quoted printable; not something you see at authoring time. The RFC
even says "(Note that space-stuffing is conceptually similar to
dot-stuffing as specified in [SMTP].)", which is again a transport
level escaping.
So we need the overt trailing-space stuff because that's an
indicator of end-of-paragraph in f=f, but not the space stuffing,
because that is only needed to transport the text.
Space-stuffing doesn't have to be shown to the user while editing, but
it's part of format=flowed, and it's required, not optional. The
paragraph before the one you quoted is this:
On generation, any unquoted lines which start with ">", and any lines
which start with a space or "From " MUST be space-stuffed. Other
lines MAY be space-stuffed as desired.
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3676.html#section-4.4>
Yes, it is required, just as dot stuffing in SMTP is required. I still
consider it part of the transport/encoding layer _conceptually_. A bit
like I can compose some nonASCII Unicode text and require
quoted-printable UTF-8 behind the scenes I suppose.
That's why I consider it conceptually separate. I'm not arguing that
there's no requirement for space stuffing. I'm arguing that there's no
need or benefit to burden the authoring interface with it.
A bit like your long-lines<->format=flowed mode switch in your emacs
mode: they're semanticly equivalent, but you could compose in long-lines
mode and _send_ in format=flowed format as an entirely valid way to
author a format=flowed message.
I'm not sure we're disagreeing here, except for the conceptual
separation of the space-stuffing step.
Cheers,
Cameron Simpson <c...@cskk.id.au>
