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From: DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM (David C. Plummer)
Newsgroups: mod.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: Formatting Query
Message-ID: <860916105625.6.DCP@KOYAANISQATSI.S4CC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: Tue, 16-Sep-86 10:56:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: KOYAANIS.860916105625.6.DCP
Posted: Tue Sep 16 10:56:00 1986
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Tabs should be expanded at the source; not by any heuristic in some
program that has no chance of guessing right.  This is preferably the
user's mail composition program, perhaps by a user profile switch, but
it should not be done by the SMTP user side, or the SMTP sending side,
or any other mail delivery program (SMTP isn't the only one that exists
(surprise!!)).  If the user's composition program doesn't have this
feature, then the user should do the conversion if tabs are significant.

You simply cannot send data from one place to the other unless you
/know/ that both sides agree on how to interpret the characters.  I
believe the /only/ set of characters we all agree on are the 95 ascii
characters space through tilde, plus NVT newline.  I would have
italicized /know/ but only other Lisp Machines would be able to see it
without garbage characters...