Bem, se eu entendi RFC 822, eles são legais em certos casos, eu acho que é um artefato dos dias de telas pequenas com resoluções 24x80 ..
Estas seções parecem ser bastante claras. Sujeitos podem ser dobrados, e dobrar é um CRLF mais LWSP (espaço branco linear). é possível que tenham sido supeseded, Wietse (nas listas de postfix) conhece seus RFCs do avesso se você quiser uma resposta definitiva.
3.1.1. LONG HEADER FIELDS
Each header field can be viewed as a single, logical line of
ASCII characters, comprising a field-name and a field-body.
For convenience, the field-body portion of this conceptual
entity can be split into a multiple-line representation; this
is called "folding". The general rule is that wherever there
may be linear-white-space (NOT simply LWSP-chars), a CRLF
immediately followed by AT LEAST one LWSP-char may instead be
inserted. Thus, the single line
To: "Joe & J. Harvey" <ddd @Org>, JJV @ BBN
can be represented as:
To: "Joe & J. Harvey" <ddd @ Org>,
JJV@BBN
and
To: "Joe & J. Harvey"
<ddd@ Org>, JJV
@BBN
and
To: "Joe &
J. Harvey" <ddd @ Org>, JJV @ BBN
The process of moving from this folded multiple-line
representation of a header field to its single line represen-
tation is called "unfolding". Unfolding is accomplished by
regarding CRLF immediately followed by a LWSP-char as
equivalent to the LWSP-char.
Note: While the standard permits folding wherever linear-
white-space is permitted, it is recommended that struc-
tured fields, such as those containing addresses, limit
folding to higher-level syntactic breaks. For address
fields, it is recommended that such folding occur
between addresses, after the separating comma.
3.1.2. STRUCTURE OF HEADER FIELDS
Once a field has been unfolded, it may be viewed as being com-
posed of a field-name followed by a colon (":"), followed by a
field-body, and terminated by a carriage-return/line-feed.
The field-name must be composed of printable ASCII characters
(i.e., characters that have values between 33. and 126.,
decimal, except colon). The field-body may be composed of any
ASCII characters, except CR or LF. (While CR and/or LF may be
present in the actual text, they are removed by the action of
unfolding the field.)
Certain field-bodies of headers may be interpreted according
to an internal syntax that some systems may wish to parse.
These fields are called "structured fields". Examples
include fields containing dates and addresses. Other fields,
such as "Subject" and "Comments", are regarded simply as
strings of text.
Note: Any field which has a field-body that is defined as
other than simply <text> is to be treated as a struc-
tured field.
Field-names, unstructured field bodies and structured
field bodies each are scanned by their own, independent
"lexical" analyzers.
3.1.3. UNSTRUCTURED FIELD BODIES
For some fields, such as "Subject" and "Comments", no struc-
turing is assumed, and they are treated simply as <text>s, as
in the message body. Rules of folding apply to these fields,
so that such field bodies which occupy several lines must
therefore have the second and successive lines indented by at
least one LWSP-char.
Editar pelo questionador : Espero que o NickW me perdoe por adicionar uma nota dizendo que o RFC822 foi obsoleto pelo RFC2822, mas o novo RFC diz praticamente a mesma coisa em sua seção 2.2.3 , e confirma explicitamente que essa dobra deve ser removida antes de qualquer processamento adicional ser feito:
Each header field is logically a single line of characters comprising the field name, the colon, and the field body. For convenience however, and to deal with the 998/78 character limitations per line, the field body portion of a header field can be split into a multiple line representation; this is called "folding". The general rule is that wherever this standard allows for folding white space (not simply WSP characters), a CRLF may be inserted before any WSP. For example, the header field:
Subject: This is a testcan be represented as:
Subject: This is a testNote: Though structured field bodies are defined in such a way that folding can take place between many of the lexical tokens (and even within some of the lexical tokens), folding SHOULD be limited to
placing the CRLF at higher-level syntactic breaks. For instance, if a field body is defined as comma-separated values, it is recommended that folding occur after the comma separating the structured items in preference to other places where the field could be folded, even if it is allowed elsewhere.The process of moving from this folded multiple-line representation of a header field to its single line representation is called "unfolding". Unfolding is accomplished by simply removing any CRLF that is immediately followed by WSP. Each header field should be treated in its unfolded form for further syntactic and semantic evaluation.
Isso não é para diminuir o fato de que NickW me apontou com exatidão exatamente o que eu precisava saber, apenas para ajudar essa resposta a ser relevante para qualquer um que possa se deparar com ela no futuro.