Generally it is assumed that the e-mail server does not alter the message at all, and that the sender and their client software is entirely in control of the message which is sent. In some systems, such as Lotus ccMail, Lotus Notes, Microsoft Exchange or Novell Groupwise, the client and server do not follow this model, do not use Internet standards and do not necessarily follow the conventions and standards of Internet e-mail. In those cases compatibility with Internet standards may be handled by a third item of software - a gateway. Thus there can be problems of a significant difference between what the sender sees when they write the e-mail (which is probably similar to how it appears to recipients in their office), and what is actually sent to Internet recipients.
Users of Internet compliant software sometimes disparage the continued use of proprietary systems such as Novell Groupwise or Lotus Notes, based on the awkward or hard-to-read e-mails they sometimes receive from these systems. However their continued use is inevitable since within their own system they provide additional powerful "groupware" functionality which is valuable to larger organizations and which cannot currently be provided with standard Internet protocols. All these systems can be configured to respect Internet technical standards and conventions (although perhaps not in a way which the sender can see or control) - the problem is that they are sometimes mis-configured by default, creating difficulties for all their users.
Some e-mail client programs can be configured (or are configured by default) to send each paragraph as one long line. Some e-mail systems such as Groupwise (and apparently Lotus Notes), have a single setting in the server (the Message Transfer Agent, which may include a SMTP gateway) which either wraps all outgoing e-mails of all users to a particular line length, or sends all e-mails of all users with each paragraph as an arbitrarily long line (unless the user manually sets the line length by pressing "enter"). In neither case does the user control this single, system-wide, setting. Nor may the server's wrapping correspond to what they see on screen when writing.
Arbitrarily long lines can be sent within SMTP standards using the "quoted-printable" MIME type.
If such arbitrarily long lines are sent as plain text, then the 1,000 character limit of SMTP may be reached and the sending client or system may wrap the line arbitrarily there, or may send it out longer than 1,000 characters. If this happens, a recipient SMTP server may reject it, or break the line. In one instance a plain text e-mail from Groupwise 4.2 exceeded the 1,000 character per line limit. That paragraph, of 1,253 characters was broken in mid word by a SMTP server just before the 1,000th character. This and later versions of Groupwise are used in a significant number of VET institutes, where the system is valued for many functions apart from its Internet e-mail capabilities.
Quoting styles. The established approach to quoting a line of text: "> " or ">" is no longer the only approach. Other methods, which are the default in Groupwise and perhaps other clients or e-mail systems, are much harder to understand, at least in some circumstances, since they mark only the start of the paragraph as a comment, rather than the start of each line. A plethora of incompatible quoting styles is a source of error and frustration for novices and experienced users alike - so an operational guideline standardise on "> " or ">" was decided upon, with the matter to be reviewed within 12 months or so.
I have been informed that the issue regarding line wrapping is indeed set at the gateway - in Groupwise 5.2 and up, this is known as the "GWIA". There are additional settings controlling the type of MIME encoding, etc.
Additionally, in GW5.5 EP (for Enhancement Pack) and higher on Windows, HTML first became available for reading and authoring mail (provided Internet Explorer is installed).
In Groupwise 5.5EP, the message format is controlled from the Groupwise client. When composing mail:
The client then remembers that setting.
- Click on "View"
- Then select either "Plain Text" or "HTML"
WARNING: The GW client will turn the HTML setting back on all by itself if the user receives or reads e-mail that has been MIME encoded with HTML.
Original material courtesy of Gerald E. Boyd.
Last modified:
May 24, 2007