Header Alignment and Folding

Keywords: headerlabelalign, headerlinelength

The headerlabelalign keyword controls the alignment point for message headers enqueued on this channel; it takes an integer-valued argument. The alignment point is the margin where the contents of headers are aligned. For example, sample header lines with an alignment point of 10 might look like this:

To:       joe@siroe.com
From:     mary@siroe.com
Subject:  Alignment test
         

The default headerlabelalign is 0, which causes headers not to be aligned. The headerlinelength keyword controls the length of message header lines enqueued on this channel. Lines longer than this are folded in accordance with RFC 822 folding rules.

These keywords only control the format of the headers of the message in the message queue; the actual display of headers is normally controlled by the user agent. In addition, headers are routinely reformatted as they are transferred across the Internet, so these keywords may have no visible effect even when used in conjunction with simple user agents that do not reformat message headers.