Date: Wed, 04 Mar 2009 02:02:11 -0500
From: "Mike B." <omni at omniphile.com>
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re:  Re: Happy Square Root Day !
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

Michael Walsh wrote:

> The Yahoo list didn't break the link (atleast what I saw here) , but =
> Keith's list did.  I'm sure there's a wonderful explanation dealing with =
> all sorts of technical issues.

That's because Yahoo lets you send non-standard messages with all sorts
of crazy widths.  Luckily, I use Thunderbird, which has a "re-wrap"
function so I can get the message to fit into my monitor, and not have
to read the entire thing on one line when someone sends without hitting
return at all...or using a mailer that wraps on send (like Eudora and
Thunderbird do).

Standard for mail message width is about 72 characters.  This is to
allow for quoting marks (">") to be added in threads and still stay
within 80 columns (the old terminal standard width).  If your lines go
over about 1024 characters there's a chance that some mail servers will
just delete the message as invalid, or truncate the illegally long lines
(there's no such thing as an infinitely large buffer, so they set a
limit somewhere).  A decent mailer (like Eudora or Thunderbird) won't
let that happen, and will wrap lines on send...regardless of what you
type in.

-- Mike B.