YAMFU (Yet Another Mail F--- Up)

[jc at trillian.mit.edu (John Chambers)]

Jerry Feldman wrote:
| The issue is not the URL, but with the way I presented it preceeded by
| server:. For instance, server:http://asgard.blu.org
| This works fine with exmh.
| "Patrick O'Rourke" wrote:
|
| > I have no problem with it using the mail client w/ mozilla 0.9.4
| > (RH 7.1).

This is true.  I've seen  a  lot  of  curious  results  when  various
programs attempt to recognize URLs in plain text. They sometimes give
"interesting" results with marginal URLs.  One of my  test  cases  is
that I have a collection of jokes at:
  http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/;-)/

It can be fun to send such URLs to people via  plain-text  email  and
see if they can use it.  Most GUI mail readers will mangle it one way
or another.  Some will work despite the  mangling.   Plain-text  mail
readers  just  show  it,  and  you  can  cut  and  paste it into your
browser's window.

Mozilla seems to handle this without any problems (though when I  put
it in the URL widget, the semicolon changes to %3b).  I've used it as
a test for various web-enabled programs, and some of them fail badly,
even when I put the URL in quotes. Unix itself isn't bothered by such
file names, of course, though  most  of  the  shells  obviously  need
quotes to handle it correctly.

(I suppose this URL would qualify as "geek humor". ;-)

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