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Re: Format=Flowed



On 2006-12-01, George <d1945@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I've just noticed that messages generated by Mozilla, Apple Mail and a
> few others that employ this format appear a bit odd when viewed in mutt.
> Specifically, any spaces in the indent string are removed from the
> display, so we see
> 
> >Someone said this
> >and that.
> 
> instead of 
> 
> > Someone said this
> > and that.
> 
> which is what exists in the message.  A minor issue, perhaps, but less
> than optimal when trying to slog through the typically poorly-formatted
> messages found on most mailing lists.
> 
> My question is whether this is a bug, a feature, or whether I should go
> ahead and remove the format=flowed parameter from the Content-Type
> header for all such emails, and call it a day.

The structure of format=flowed messages is specified by RFC 3676.  
It states that when a format=flowed message in interpreted, any 
leading '>' characters are to be counted to determine quoting depth 
and logically deleted.  Then if the first character of any line is a 
space, that line was space-stuffed and that space is to be logically 
deleted.  What remains is the actual text of the message.

How a mail client formats that text for presentation is left to the 
mail client.  Mutt does the quote- and space-stripping described 
above, then indicates each level of quoting with a '>' when the 
message is displayed.  This results in the effect you observed.  
This is a perfectly valid rendering of format=flowed text, but some 
find it unappealing.

I didn't like it, so I wrote a patch to "fix" it:

    
http://www.spocom.com/users/gjohnson/mutt/patch-1.5.5.1.gj.stuff_all_quoted.3

It was written for mutt-1.5.5.1, but I have applied it successfully 
to mutt-1.5.12 as well.  There is a brief description of the patch 
on this page:

    http://www.spocom.com/users/gjohnson/mutt/patches.html

HTH,
Gary

-- 
Gary Johnson                               | Agilent Technologies
garyjohn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx                   | Wireless Division
http://www.spocom.com/users/gjohnson/mutt/ | Spokane, Washington, USA