Purdy boundary

Purdy boundary

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

I think it's important that the multipart boundary be as pretty as
possible.  I'm using


--=-=-=

as the default boundary, and am adding one "=" for each subsequent
(and/or nested) multipart, so we get

--=-=-=
--==-=-=
--===-=-=
--====-=-=

and so on.  (This doesn't work properly in 0.49.)

In 0.50 I've added checks for whether this boundary is unique, and if
it's not, it iterates until it finds a unique boundary.

But is this the prettiest possible boundary?  The two hypens at the
beginning are outside our control, but the rest we can do what we want 
with.  It has to be less than 70 characters long, though.

The concluding boundary has two hypens at the end.  Like this:

--=-=-=--

Hey!  Symmetrical!  Neat!

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
  larsi@ifi.uio.no * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen

Re: Purdy boundary

[Didier Verna]

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Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen writes:

Lars> But is this the prettiest possible boundary?  The two hypens at the
Lars> beginning are outside our control, but the rest we can do what we want
Lars> with.  It has to be less than 70 characters long, though.

	  --¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø¤º°`°º¤--

	:-)

-- 
    /     /   _   _       Didier Verna        http://www.inf.enst.fr/~verna/
 - / / - / / /_/ /      E.N.S.T. INF C201.1      mailto:verna@inf.enst.fr
/_/ / /_/ / /__ /        46 rue Barrault        Tel.   (33) 01 45 81 73 46
                      75634 Paris  cedex 13     Fax.   (33) 01 45 81 31 19

Re: Purdy boundary

[Fredrik Glöckner]

Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@ifi.uio.no> writes:

>  I'm using
>
>
>  --=-=-=
>
>  as the default boundary, and am adding one "=" for each subsequent
>  (and/or nested) multipart [...]  It has to be less than 70 characters
>  long, though.

Does this mean that we can only have a total of 66 (or so) multiparts in
a message?  If this is a limitation worth considering, we may need an
alternate strategy for messages with really many parts.

Fredrik
.

Re: Purdy boundary

[luis fernandes]

>>>>> "dv" == Didier Verna <verna@inf.enst.fr> writes:

    dv> --¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø¤º°`°º¤--

    dv> :-)

On a vt100 terminal, I'm seeing a lot of numbers preceeded by
backslashes; like this:

--\244\272\260`\260\272\344\370,\270\270,\370\244\272\260\244\272\260`\260\272\344\370,\270\270,\370\244\272\260`\244\272\260`\260\272\344\370,\270\270,\370\244\272\260

:-(

>:-> (<-- that's not my suggestion, btw; it's a smiley for "devil's
advocate". But I've always had a fondness for the "cut-here"
ideograms for a pair of scissors, in the olden days before MIME; I
don't know if that methaphor applies, though (and they nest quite nicely):

--8<--
--8<--8<--

Re: Purdy boundary

[Steinar Bang]

>>>>> luis fernandes <elf@ee.ryerson.ca>:

>> :-> (<-- that's not my suggestion, btw; it's a smiley for "devil's
> advocate". But I've always had a fondness for the "cut-here"
> ideograms for a pair of scissors, in the olden days before MIME; I
> don't know if that methaphor applies, though (and they nest quite nicely):

> --8<--
> --8<--8<--

Scissors! Scissors! Scissors!

This would actually look better than any MIME-boundary I've yet seen,
for die-hard oldtimers that still doesn't have a MUA supporting MIME.

Good suggestion!

Re: Purdy boundary

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

Fredrik "Glöckner" <fredrik.glockner@bio.uio.no> writes:

> Does this mean that we can only have a total of 66 (or so) multiparts in
> a message?

Nah.  It only adds ='s until a certain length, and then it does
translates the last "=" into a "-".  Which should give us (66 + 65 +
...) nested multiparts.

Which should be enough for everyone.  :-)

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
  larsi@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen

Re: Purdy boundary

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

Kurt Swanson <ksw@dna.lth.se> writes:


> It's not symmetrical, but I like:
> 
> --part=one--
> --part=two--

I don't think having, like, information in the boundary is of much
use.  The boundary should be as invisible as possible for non-MIME
readers, and what it looks like for anyone else doesn't matter, since
MIME-capable readers never see the boundaries.

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
  larsi@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen

Re: Purdy boundary

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

Steinar Bang <sb@metis.no> writes:


> > --8<--
> > --8<--8<--
> 
> Scissors! Scissors! Scissors!

Well, the dashes at the end are only on the final boundary, so they
would mostly look likeL

--8<
--8<--8<

Which is kinda fun, actually.

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
  larsi@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen

Re: Purdy boundary

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

Kurt Swanson <ksw@dna.lth.se> writes:


> Use spaces then.

Spaces?  In the boundary?  That's not valid.

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
  larsi@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen

Re: Purdy boundary

[Wes Hardaker]

>>>>> On 18 Nov 1998 03:52:49 +0100, Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@ifi.uio.no> said:

Lars> But is this the prettiest possible boundary?  The two hypens at
Lars> the beginning are outside our control, but the rest we can do
Lars> what we want with.  It has to be less than 70 characters long,
Lars> though.

How about:

--Gnus-is-awesome-and-you-should-use-it-for-everything

Then the second part could be:

--Gnus-is-not-evil-Gnus-is-not-evil-Gnus-is-not-evil

Then the third part could be:

--Send-Lars-Lots-of-Money-Send-Lars-Lots-of-Money

Then, when you run out of installed expressions in your
gnus-subliminal-messages-list:

--`fortune -s | head -1 | sed 's/[^a-zA-Z0-9]/-/g;s/-+$//;'`

Which gives you all sorts of things:

--Long-computations-which-yield-zero-are-probably-all-for-naught
--Q--What-do-you-get-when-you-cross-the-Godfather-with-an-attorney
--When-I-was-little--I-went-into-a-pet-shop-and-they-asked-how-big-I-d-get
--The-only-really-decent-thing-to-do-behind-a-person-s-back-is-pat-it
--The-average-income-of-the-modern-teenager-is-about-2-a-m
--I-am-a-bookaholic---If-you-are-a-decent-person--you-will-not-sell-me
--The-difference-between-genius-and-stupidity-is-that-genius-has-its-limits
--How-come-wrong-numbers-are-never-busy
--the-HIGHWAY-is-made-out-of-LIME-JELLO-and-my-HONDA-is-a-barbequeued
--Help-stamp-out-and-abolish-redundancy-and-repetition
--To-err-is-human
--NEWARK-has-been-REZONED----DES-MOINES-has-been-REZONED
--There-are-certain-things-men-must-do-to-remain-men
--The-light-of-a-hundred-stars-does-not-equal-the-light-of-the-moon
--Fools-ignore-complexity---Pragmatists-suffer-it
--The-only-winner-in-the-War-of-1812-was-Tchaikovsky
--Power--like-a-desolating-pestilence
--Somehow-I-reached-excess-without-ever-noticing-when-I-was-passing-through
--If-it-smells-it-s-chemistry--if-it-crawls-it-s-biology--if-it-doesn-t-work
--The-first-thing-we-do--let-s-kill-all-the-lawyers

Hmm, you know, this started as a joke, but I really like it now...

-- 
"Ninjas aren't dangerous.  They're more afraid of you than you are of them."

Re: Purdy boundary

[George J McNinch]

> From: Fredrik "Glöckner" <fredrik.glockner@bio.uio.no>
> Subject: Re: Purdy boundary

This message produces a summary line which has a glitch.

I see [  18: redrik "Glöckner    ]

pgnus-0.48 (a bit old, I s'pose)

I haven't noticed anything like that before.

The quotes are the problem (removing them fixes the summary).

Best,
George

Re: Purdy boundary

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

Wes Hardaker <wjhardaker@ucdavis.edu> writes:

> --Gnus-is-awesome-and-you-should-use-it-for-everything
> 
> Then the second part could be:
> 
> --Gnus-is-not-evil-Gnus-is-not-evil-Gnus-is-not-evil
> 
> Then the third part could be:
> 
> --Send-Lars-Lots-of-Money-Send-Lars-Lots-of-Money

Anyone would have to agree that these are very purdy.

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
  larsi@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen

Re: Purdy boundary

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

George J McNinch <McNinch.1@nd.edu> writes:

> > From: Fredrik "Glöckner" <fredrik.glockner@bio.uio.no>
> > Subject: Re: Purdy boundary
> 
> This message produces a summary line which has a glitch.
> 
> I see [  18: redrik "Glöckner    ]

The Gnus picking-names-from-From-lines thing guesses, and sometimes it 
guesses wrong.  It's quite fast, though.

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
  larsi@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen

Re: Purdy boundary

[Fredrik Glöckner]

George J McNinch <McNinch.1@nd.edu> writes:

>  This message produces a summary line which has a glitch.
>  
>  I see [  18: redrik "Glöckner    ]
>
>  The quotes are the problem (removing them fixes the summary).

As far as I know, it's the news-to-mail interface at sunsite.auc.dk
which adds the quotes.  And probably the dot just below my sig too?

Fredrik
.

Re: Purdy boundary

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

Fredrik "Glöckner" <fredrik.glockner@bio.uio.no> writes:

> As far as I know, it's the news-to-mail interface at sunsite.auc.dk
> which adds the quotes.  And probably the dot just below my sig too?

Yes, I think so.

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
  larsi@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen