Re: e-mail with line in body beginning with "From"
On Sat 10 Dec 2022 at 20:45:37 (-0500), paulf@quillandmouse.com wrote:
> On Sun, 11 Dec 2022 09:49:54 +1100
> David <bouncingcats@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Sat, 10 Dec 2022 at 19:05, <paulf@quillandmouse.com> wrote:
> > > On Fri, 9 Dec 2022 20:39:34 -0600 Greg Marks <gtmarks@gmail.com>
> > > wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
> >
> > > I don't know the RFCs involved, but I'm guessing they mandate or
> > > suggest this treatment.
> >
> > Here's a reference describing 'mbox' format, which provides
> > reference RFCs:
> > https://manpages.debian.org/bullseye/mutt/mbox.5.en.html
> >
>
> Excellent reference. Just the thing.
I'm guessing it's useful when
. everyone is using systems that agree to do that type of escaping,
so that it's safe to undo it, even to many levels,
. the messages are for humans to read, and they can judge from the
context whether the content has become mangled at all (which is
why I enquired of the OP whether the precise format is important
to the recipient).
But now that there are fail-safe methods of encoding "From ", there
doesn't seem much point after two decades in treating this part of
the document as much more than historical.
As for the RFCs cited within, *822 are both concerned only with From:
headers, not what are termed From_ postmarks. And, without an
excessively careful reading of 976 (hardly justified by its 3½ decade
age), the escaping of From is only discussed in the context of
message envelopes, without any consideration of what's contained
within the message.
Note that mbox(5) says "A /variant/ of this format was documented in
RFC976" (my emphasis), and 976 starts by saying "It does not address
the format for storage of messages on one machine".
Cheers,
David.
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