On 18 Aug, Philip Hazel wrote:
> On Wed, 18 Aug 1999, Christian Dysthe wrote:
>
>> The original problem was that mail when it arrived using Postilion and
>> exim often had long non broken lines which made mail hard to read.
>
> That's a new one on me! (Though I see plenty of messages with long lines;
> I assume people are using MUAs that just send long lines. Exim doesn't
> touch the bodies of messages. If they contain long lines, it won't split
> them.) Some MUAs (Pine, for example) will wrap long lines on display, so
> sometimes you don't even know you are reading a message containing long
> lines.
>
> Thank you for your support. I guess one way of tracking down what is
> happening is to write a short script like this:
>
> #! /bin/sh
> cat >/some/file
>
> and then set "User defined program" to run that script. That will show
> up exactly what Postilion is sending to Exim.
I have tried a series of test of this problem, and I have come to the
conclusion that there is a problem with the way that EXIM, Postilion
and Operamail are interacting. Postilion delivers the messages to
Operamail just fine when it does so directly. It also does so just fine
when it uses "sendmail -oi" as the user defined program. But, when
using EXIM, the lines get mangled as Christian has described.
Here is the text which Christian used as a demo:
---BEGIN---
1.1. "Confidential Information" means nonpublic information that the
partiesdesignate as being confidential or which under the circumstances surrounding
disclosure ought to be treated as confidential. "Confidential Information"
includes, without limitation, information relating to either Party`s software
products which may include source code, API data files, documentation,
specifications, data bases, networks, system design, file layouts, tool
combinations and development methods as well as information relating to a Party`s
business or financial affairs, which may include business methods, marketing
strategies, pricing, competitor information, product development strategies and
---END---
Note: in the second line, the words "parties" and "designate" are run
together. This is how the text appears in Operamail. It is probably a
cut and paste error.
The above is how the text is received and displayed by Operamail when
Postilion sends it directly (using it's own SMTP implementation) and
when using sendmail to send.
Below is how the text appears when using EXIM to send, and Operamail to
receive:
---BEGIN---
1.1. "Confidential Information" means nonpublic information that the partiesdesignate as being confidential or which under the circumstances
surrounding disclosure ought to be treated as confidential. "Confidential Information" includes, without limitation, information relating to either Party`s
software products which may include source code, API data files, documentation, specifications, data bases, networks, system design, file layouts, tool
combinations and development methods as well as information relating to a Party`s business or financial affairs, which may include business methods,
marketing strategies, pricing, competitor information, product development strategies and
---END---
Interestingly, when using EXIM to send, and Postilion to receive, we see this:
---BEGIN---
1.1. "Confidential Information" means nonpublic information that the
partiesdesignate as being confidential or which under the circumstances surrounding
disclosure ought to be treated as confidential. "Confidential Information"
includes, without limitation, information relating to either Party`s software
products which may include source code, API data files, documentation,
specifications, data bases, networks, system design, file layouts, tool
combinations and development methods as well as information relating to a Party`s
business or financial affairs, which may include business methods, marketing
strategies, pricing, competitor information, product development strategies and
---END---
When sending this same text, using Philip's suggestion of a shell
script to capture the output, this is what ends up in the result:
---BEGIN---
$ more /tmp/mailtest
Date: Wed, 18 Aug 1999 22:57:29 -0500 (CDT)
From: Nic Bernstein <nic@???>
Reply-To: nic@???
Subject: Test using script
To: nic@localhost
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/plain; CHARSET=US-ASCII
1.1. "Confidential Information" means nonpublic information that the
partiesdesignate as being confidential or which under the circumstances surrounding
disclosure ought to be treated as confidential. "Confidential Information"
includes, without limitation, information relating to either Party`s software
products which may include source code, API data files, documentation,
specifications, data bases, networks, system design, file layouts, tool
combinations and development methods as well as information relating to a Party`s
business or financial affairs, which may include business methods, marketing
strategies, pricing, competitor information, product development strategies and
---END---
When sending from Postilion, via EXIM, to sendmail, and reading with
PINE, we get this:
---BEGIN--
1.1. "Confidential Information" means nonpublic information that the
partiesdesignate as being confidential or which under the circumstances
surrounding
disclosure ought to be treated as confidential. "Confidential Information"
includes, without limitation, information relating to either Party`s software
products which may include source code, API data files, documentation,
specifications, data bases, networks, system design, file layouts, tool
combinations and development methods as well as information relating to a
Party`s
business or financial affairs, which may include business methods, marketing
strategies, pricing, competitor information, product development strategies and
---END---
When sending from Postilion, via direct SMTP to sendmail and reading with PINE
we get:
---BEGIN---
1.1. "Confidential Information" means nonpublic information that the
partiesdesignate as being confidential or which under the circumstances
surrounding
disclosure ought to be treated as confidential. "Confidential Information"
includes, without limitation, information relating to either Party`s software
products which may include source code, API data files, documentation,
specifications, data bases, networks, system design, file layouts, tool
combinations and development methods as well as information relating to a
Party`s
business or financial affairs, which may include business methods, marketing
strategies, pricing, competitor information, product development strategies and
---END---
In summary, then, what I have found is that when sending from Postilion via
either direct SMTP or via sendmail, messages arrive at Operamail just as expected
with all formatting intact. When sending from Postilion, via EXIM to Operamail,
formatting is shot. When sending from Postilion, via EXIM to Postilion all is
well. When sending from Postilion, via either EXIM or direct SMTP to PINE,
sentences are wrapped by PINE, but are identical. For what it is worth, when
the same text is sent from Operamail to a sendmail system, it is wrapped as it
is in the last example above, but when sent from Operamail to Operamail, there
is no wrapping. This makes me suspicious of Operamail's performance.
All test which I have performed with Operamail are visible at my Operamail
account: user name "nicnic" password "jivejive"
I do not know what other tests to perform. I have no other mail clients
which will allow me to configure the sending program. I hope that this is
of some assistance.
Best regards,
-nic
--
Nic Bernstein nic@???
PGP public key http://postilion.org/nic/key
All opinions expressed are mine, if you want them it'll cost you.
---END
A gzipped version of this (to preserve all characters is attached).
This looks just as I would expect.
--
Nic Bernstein nic@???
PGP public key http://postilion.org/nic/key
All opinions expressed are mine, if you want them it'll cost you.
