dovecot - Oct 2004 - Spaces removed from subjects in FETCH response

I'm using SpamAssassin to tag spam and prefix the spam score to the subject 
line. To make the scores sort properly in the client's message list, I pad 
the score with spaces to right-align it.

It looks like dovecot-0.99.10.9-1.FC3.2 is frustrating this by stripping 
the excess spaces from the subject before reporting it in FETCH responses. 
Here's an actual subject line:

Subject: (SPAM?  6.9) Urgent Response !!

Note the multiple spaces before the "6.9". Here's the matching
FETCH
command and reply, as reported in Mulberry's IMAP.log (just the relevant 
message is shown here):

A00035 FETCH 1507:1524 (FLAGS RFC822.SIZE UID INTERNALDATE ENVELOPE 
BODYSTRUCTURE)

* 1517 FETCH (UID 1557 FLAGS (\Seen) INTERNALDATE "02-Oct-2004 12:24:40 
-0700" RFC822.SIZE 6263 BODYSTRUCTURE (("text" "plain"
("charset"
"us-ascii") NIL NIL "8bit" 1168 24 NIL ("inline"
NIL) NIL)("message"
"rfc822" ("x-spam-type" "original") NIL
"original message before
SpamAssassin" "8bit" 3855 ("Sat, 02 Oct 2004 13:52:28
-0400" "Urgent
Response !!" (("Dr. Price" NIL "pkprice2i"
"netscape.net")) (("Dr. Price"
NIL "pkprice2i" "netscape.net")) (("Dr. Price" NIL
"pkprice2i"
"netscape.net")) NIL NIL NIL NIL "<E1CDo3Y-0002FZ-9f at
host.cell04.com>")
("text" "plain" ("charset" "us-ascii")
NIL NIL "7bit" 2731 35 NIL NIL NIL)
63 NIL ("inline" NIL) NIL) "mixed" ("boundary" 
"----------=_415F007A.0DECCC93") NIL NIL) ENVELOPE ("Sat, 02 Oct
2004
13:52:28 -0400" "(SPAM? 6.9) Urgent Response !!" (("Dr.
Price" NIL
"pkprice2i" "netscape.net")) (("Dr. Price" NIL
"pkprice2i" "netscape.net"))
(("Dr. Price" NIL "pkprice2i" "netscape.net")) NIL
NIL NIL NIL
"<E1CDo3Y-0002FZ-9f at host.cell04.com>"))

On 6.10.2004, at 17:58, Kenneth Porter wrote:
> It looks like dovecot-0.99.10.9-1.FC3.2 is frustrating this by  
> stripping the excess spaces from the subject before reporting it in  
> FETCH responses. Here's an actual subject line:
Yes, and I think other servers do this as well. See the "Envelope  
mangling" thread in:

http://www.faqchest.com/prgm/wuimap-l/imap-03/imap-0305/imap-030500/

and "the official conclusion":

http://www.faqchest.com/prgm/wuimap-l/imap-03/imap-0305/imap-030500/ 
imap03052307_10796.html

I still don't think it's necessarily such a good idea, but I'd
rather
not break it on purpose. You could anyway fix it by changing sources:

Bottom of lib-imap/imap-quote.c :

	imap_quote_append(str, value, value_len, TRUE);

change TRUE to FALSE.
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--On Wednesday, October 06, 2004 6:58 PM +0300 Timo Sirainen <tss at
iki.fi>
wrote:
> http://www.faqchest.com/prgm/wuimap-l/imap-03/imap-0305/imap-030500/
>
> and "the official conclusion":
>
> http://www.faqchest.com/prgm/wuimap-l/imap-03/imap-0305/imap-030500/
> imap03052307_10796.html
Ah, found it in slightly more digestible form here:

<http://www.washington.edu/imap/listarch/2003/msg00738.html>
> I still don't think it's necessarily such a good idea, but I'd
rather
> not break it on purpose. You could anyway fix it by changing sources:
>
> Bottom of lib-imap/imap-quote.c :
>
> 	imap_quote_append(str, value, value_len, TRUE);
>
> change TRUE to FALSE.
I agree, it's useful to preserve the original structure, and subjects 
breaking across lines should be the exception. I could see doing white 
space collapsing for white space across a line break, but I don't see any 
value in doing it mid-line.

It would be great if this could be made a compile-time or config file 
setting.

Meanwhile, I'll post back to the Mulberry and SpamAssassin lists about the 
issue.