Mail.app idiocy [was Re: UNIX kernel notification system]

[Mouse <mouse%Rodents-Montreal.ORG@localhost>]

>>> [Do you really mean to use paragraph-length lines?  [...]]
>> less(1) (or more(1)) doesn't take care of you?
> [...]
> I assume you're using Mail.app as a user-agent.  Apple used to do
> this right -- they wrapped the lines at 72 columns or thereabouts,
> but then marked the text as "format=flowed" in the MIME headers, so
> readers wishing to rewrap it could do so.

> In recent versions they've broken this again.  Woo hoo.  Because, you
> know, all the world's a Mac and every user-agent is Mail.app.

There actually is approximately zero chance this will get fixed.  I
know someone who works at Apple (I have no reason to think he's on this
list) who checked their logs and tells me the breakage was done for
Exchange-compatability reasons.  I would have hoped Apple would have
had the balls to close the bug report with a "cannot fix; it's Exchange
that's broken here" response, or _at least_ provide a "bug
compatability with Exchange" tickbox, but apparently they prefer to
just ship broken software, silently gulling their users into inflicting
second-hand Microsoft brain damage on the rest of the net.

It doesn't help that most Apple users - heck, most users - aren't
competent to understand the issue and thus don't see what the problem
is.  (I hasten to add that Erik is not on that list of "most [] users"
whom I fear are not competent to understand the issue.)

The current Mail.app behaviour is broken enough in its own way.  Try
sending a nicely-laid-out table like

Host    Size    Connection
frodo   74290   10-only
bilbo   81288   10/100
samwise 41442   10-only
sauron  940061  10/100/gig
aragorn 286166  10/100
merry   40447   10/100

to such a user and watch it get converted into

Host Size Connection frodo 74290 10-only bilbo 81288 10/100 samwise
41442 10-only sauron 940061 10/100/gig aragorn 286166 10/100 merry
40447 10/100

One of my correspondents at work has exactly this problem when I send
nicely formatted text.

> This is, admittedly, less evil than the Android mail client's
> unalterable behavior of base64-encoding *all* message data, even that
> which would be perfectly readable as plain ASCII text.

I don't think so.  That at least is correctly labeled and thus _can_ be
mechanically corrected for, by those for whom it needs correction.
This is a case of Mail.app suckering its users into sending out
mislabeled mail without even telling them it's doing so.

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