On Friday, February 28, 2025 10:37:51 AM MST Andrea Pappacoda wrote: > [off-list] > > On Fri Feb 28, 2025 at 5:39 PM CET, Soren Stoutner wrote: > > I agree with that. I think the above statement includes that for people who > > already know what format=flowed is (and have an MUA that can do so), but > > perhaps it should be more explicit. Maybe the following. > > > > “There is no expectation that emails sent to the mailing lists are wrapped > > by the sender at a particular column, but those sending emails may wrap > > them if they choose. Users may send in format=flowed if they desire and > > their MUA supports it.” > > Hey Soren, speaking of format=flowed, it seems that your client sends > the plain text format in flowed format (i.e., with spaces at the end of > wrapped lines), but it doesn't set the content-type to f=f (i.e., you > have "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8" instead of "Content-Type: > text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed". > > Do you know if this is on purpose? Setting the appropriate content-type > parameter would allow clients to reflow text as desired :)
I have no idea. I did some searching for format=flowed and Kmail and didn’t find much that is interesting, but I might not have looked deeply. Certainly, there is nothing in the settings that indicate any controls for it. One of the things that people who feel strongly about format=flowed can do would be to open up feature requests with every MUA and ask that it be officially supported. I considered doing so with Kmail, but decided against it because, as described in my original email, I think it is incorrect from a technical perspective for the sending MUA to determine where to wrap text. I think the correct behavior is for the sending MUA to not wrap text at all unless the user decides to put in a hard line break. I believe all line wrapping should be handled solely by the receiving MUA, which allows correct dynamic wrapping on any size screen. Format=flowed is being entirely driven by the belief that “We really want the sending MUA to wrap text, but it creates horrible problems, so here is a cludge to work around it.” When you get rid of the first part (really wanting the sending MUA to wrap text) suddenly there is no need for the second part. In 2025, any MUA that can’t figure out how to wrap receiving text deserves a bug report. However, even though I feel that this is the correct approach, if Kmail had controls for sending format=flowed I would be fine with that. So, if someone else wants to make the pitch to the Kmail developers (which will probably require sending a patch if you really want to see it merged), I would not dissuade them. When I was searching, I came across the following blog post, which I thought was a bit insightful. https://www.fastmail.com/blog/format-flowed/ -- Soren Stoutner so...@debian.org
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