Gerhard Fiedler wrote :

> What I never understood is why mail servers have to peek into 
> my message lines. They shouldn't really care about what is
> there, where the CRs and/or LFs are -- they should just pass
> it on, please, the way it was sent...
> Does anybody know why mail servers look for line ends in 
> messages? What are they trying to find?

Since the smtp protocol is *text-based* (that is works by
sending *lines* using the printable part of the US-ASCII
character set), there have to be some standard.

It's not a full 8-bit binary "channel" where you can send
just about anything.

Since the smtp protocol is based on sending *lines*, I guess
the servers *have* to listen for EOL's. How would they
keep in synk with each other if not ?

Remember, this standard was set when everyone had
a 24 x 80 char VT100 (or compatible) on their desks. Noone had
any need to send anything > 80 chars in lenght. So it's was just
logical for the smtp servers to either "cut" or "split" lines at
80 chars.

Later came different encoding systems to enable other files
then "plain text" to be transferd. Such as uuencode and
Base64. MIME and so on, but that was long after the base
smtp protocol was decided.

Jan-Erik.



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