Path: utzoo!dciem!nrcaer!scs!spl1!laidbak!att!pacbell!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!agate!ig!uwmcsd1!bbn!bbn.com!rsalz
From: rsalz@bbn.com (Rich Salz)
Newsgroups: comp.sources.d
Subject: Re: Poll on shar formats
Message-ID: <887@fig.bbn.com>
Date: 3 Jun 88 19:20:07 GMT
Article-I.D.: fig.887
References: <868@fig.bbn.com> <1494@microsoft.UUCP> <4838@teddy.UUCP>
Organization: BBN Laboratories Inc., Cambridge MA
Lines: 18


 >For some reason, people assume that a dot beginning a line is a
 >"dangerous sequence":  It is NOT!  What they are thinking of is a dot
 >ALONE on a line:  This causes some mailers to terminate reading the
 >mail.  It is silly to prefix EVERY line starting with a dot (nroff
 >source) because of this.
This is true in the Arpa-mail and UUCP-mail worlds when all the programs
are working correctly.

Folks on bitnet have reported problems to me.

I've gotten bit by broken software.

An X on all lines seems to me playing lowest-common-denominator safety,
in the same league as <64K postings.  Unfortunately it has a cost.
	/r$
-- 
Please send comp.sources.unix-related mail to rsalz@uunet.uu.net.