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