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