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Re: [PATCH] fix indent_string handling with format=flowed



Hi,

On Tue, Oct 16, 2007, Rocco Rutte wrote:
> * Johannes Stezenbach [07-10-15 23:46:23 +0200] wrote:
>
>> 2. reply to a format=fixed mail: just add '> ', not '>'
>>   (sub optimal but IMHO correct according to RFC 3676 -- since
>>   the lines are fixed they cannot be reflowed anyway and it
>>   doesn't really matter if it is '>> foo' or '> > foo', and
>>   the latter will look better in plain old MUAs)
>
> First, as $text_flowed ist set, '> > foo'-style quoting is wrong while '>> 
> foo' is okay. It doesn't really matter whether the line is fixed or not, 
> it's a line of a f=f message with a quotelevel of 2, hence either '>>foo' 
> or '>> foo'.

I beg to differ: The quote depth as defined in RFC 3676 has only
significance wrt to reformatting of quoted lines. If a quoted line is
as fixed line (or a series of fixed lines, i.e. not a paragraph in
as defined by RFC 3676), then it is totally irrelevant if it is
'>> foo' ('foo' with a quote depth of two) of '> > foo' ('> foo'
with a quote depth of one). The quote depth just has no meaning
for fixed lines.

RFC 3676 does not say anything that would prevent you from
recognizing '> > foo' in fixed content as a second level quote
and treating it as such in display.
And indeed mutt already gets this right, as do Apple Mail and
Thunderbird.

I think we disagree in our understanding of RFC 3676 in this point,
but if you read RFC 3676 again with the question "_why_ do they
define quote depth" in mind, then you'll see.


>>>> However, as I explained before:
>
>>>>> There's also a catch: If you're creating a format=flowed mail
>>>>> as a reply to a format=fixed mail, then you cannot make any
>>>>> assumptions about the text you are quoting. RFC 3676 doesn't spell
>>>>> this out, but IMHO you must then delete all trailing spaces
>>>>> from the quoted text to ensure that it will not be accidentally
>>>>> be treated as flowed.
>
>> I checked and this is indeed what Apple Mail does.
>
> But you don't want mutt to do that, too?

Yes, I do. I think Apple Mail gets this one right and mutt wrong.
(Thunderbird 2.0 also gets it wrong.)

Text from a format=fixed message is fixed and must be
quoted as fixed text in a format=flowed reply.

This is my understanding of RFC 3676.


>> At the bottom of this is:
>
>> - if you see a quoted line with a trailing space in a format=fixed
>>  mail, you seem to assume it must obviously come from a
>>  format=flowed mail thus you can treat it as such when creating
>>  a reply
>
>> - but I on the contrary think that this assumption is invalid and
>>  you must treat the line as fixed by removing the space when
>>  creating a reply
>
> No. When a format=fixed mail has a trailing space then mutt assumes the 
> line has a trailing space only because somebody put it there for a reason 
> and leaves it alone. This sounds stupid, I know, but mutt really doesn't 
> make the above assumption at all. Also, I'm confused by your conclusion 
> from that false assumption.

See above, I'll just repeat for double impact:

Text from a format=fixed message is fixed and must be
quoted as fixed text in a format=flowed reply.

For example, my first mail in this thread contained a patch,
and patches always have some lines ending with a space.
If you had quoted this patch in your format=flowed reply with
current mutt, the patch would have been mangled on my display.


> I'm also confused by that second point since earlier (and in the other mail 
> I'm ignoring to consolidate the discussion) you mentioned you don't want 
> mutt to have a "downgrade" feature, which I "defined" to be exactly that 
> space removal.

The confusion seems to be as to when the space removal should happen.

What I want is not a "downgrade" but IMHO required by RFC 3676.


> So, I'll try to summarize what your points are again to make sure we don't 
> talk about different things.
>
> 1) When replying to f=f messages, you want to be abled to use 
> $indent_string if $text_flowed is unset.

Yes.

> This is where I think space 
> removal could be relevant for, but as said it's unclear to me if you really 
> want that and if so when exactly.

When creating format=fixed messages there are no spaces to be removed.


> 2) When replying to a format=fixed mail with $text_flowed set you want mutt 
> to ensure that there's a space between quoting prefix and text. E.g. '> 
> foo' instead of '>foo', '>> foo' instead of '>>foo', etc.

Yes that would be nice. It's not strictly required by RFC 3676
but it would look nicer in plain old MUAs or web mail archives.


BTW, I meanwhile realized that my patch was much too simple minded
and my claim that it "does the right thing" was wrong. I think the
required changes to mutt are somewhat larger.
But except for my $handle_flowed option proposal I'm now primarily
concerned with correcting the RFC 3676 implementaton in mutt,
not with adding hacks to fix my silly Outlook-like quoting problem.


Thanks,
Johannes