Lines Beginning with "From" Dash-Escaped?

[Nick Andriash]

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Strange, but I just noticed that both PGP and GPG insert a dash/space
(dash-escape) at the start of a line beginning with "From". I never
noticed that before, and although I do realize that some Mail Clients used
to use "From" as a delimiter, I never thought PGP/GPG would dash-escape
it.

The dash/space is only applied if "From" starts a sentence, and the word
must be capitalised. "From" by itself is not affected. Below is an example
of what I mean:

- From here to eternity

from here to eternity

From

from

With both PGP and GPG involved, I thought this must be part of RFC 2440 so
I looked through it and found Section 7.1/Dash-Escaped Text. It hints at
PGP applying the dash-escape to "From" lines because some MUA change these
lines to ">From", so therefore GPG should follow. Although I've heard of
some MUA's that use "From" as a delimiter, I've never seen it used.

Can anyone expand on the reasons why PGP and GPG use the dash-escape in
this manner, aside from what is written in the RFC?

Thank you very much.

- -- 
Nick

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