On 17/08/2020 10:43, tom petch wrote:
On 16/08/2020 19:58, Andrew G. Malis wrote:
On Sun, Aug 16, 2020 at 2:37 PM John Levine <johnl@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
1 | 3014 | Wes Hardaker <wjhns1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Is it HTML formatting, bottom quoting, or email header explosion (or some
combination of the above) that leads the smallest individual email on the
list this past week to be 3014 bytes in length? (I didn't bother to
average
the email lengths from multi-posters).
For what it's worth, I'm trying to send this without formatting and with
minimal quoting to see how small I can get it. Now I have to try to
refrain
from posting anything else on the list this week ... :-)
Andrew,
e-mail header explosion by the ESP in part, HTML in part.
The plain text announcement of an RFC on the announce list is 2kbyte to
3kbyte. In 2012, that was up to 6kbyte by the time I received it. In
2013 that jumped to 9kbyte and in 2015 to 12kbyte and in 2016 to
16kbyte. In 2019, it went down to 11kbyte. The difference is mostly in
the x- headers with X-Microsoft-Antispam-Message-Info
being enormous.
HTML varies a lot. Your message reached me as 13423byte; removing HTML
takes that down to 12193byte while removing the X- headers cuts that to
6207byte. At the MSA stage it was probably 1270byte if it were plain
text only.
BUT this message is a very conservative use of HTML. Some MUA like to
include the Microsoft style sheet which can expand a message from
10kbyte to over 100kbyte - yes, one hundred. As a rule of thumb I would
say that a multipart alternative with HTML is about twice the size of a
plain text message.
I select the MUA option of plain text and think that the security of the
IETF system, and the usability of web mail, would be improved if that
were mandatory:-)
Just to add to my earlier figures what may, or may not, be obvious,
John's figures come from IMAP with the data on the server whereas mine
come after the e-mail has been downloaded with POP3, which means that it
has passed through more MTA, every one of which adds a header or two, so
John records me as posting one e-mail of 11404 byte but by the time I
had downloaded it, that had grown to 18646 byte. I think that John's
figures include all the headers that it took to get the e-mail to the
server. I note that the addition of large anti-spam headers can occur
prior to arrival on the server, in which case they would count toward
the IMAP figure, during the download with POP3 or both; it depends on
the policy of the ESP involved.
If, by bottom posting, you mean keeping all the previous exchanges,
then each addition is likely to be a few kbyte so it builds up and a
single, plain text e-mail can grow to tens of kbyte, even 100 or more.
Where the text goes, in plain text, has little or no impact. Where my
response includes the e-mail headers from previous posts, then I tend to
edit the headers to just sender and date, which saves a few bytes but
saves several lines of display so users have less to scroll down.
HTH
Tom Petch
Cheers,
Andy
.
