I might be speaking out of lack of knowledge, but HTML generally ignores line breaks in the BODY and instead uses a specific tag to indicate breaks and/or change of paragraph.
I have not looked specifically at HTML based mail, but I would expect the same behavior. Also, at least in Outlook 2010 and Outloook 2003 when one uses plain text option, one also specifics a line length that defaults to 72 characters. Best wishes, Jonathan On Nov 11, 2014, at 6:56 AM, Sabahattin Gucukoglu <listse...@me.com> wrote: > Hi Grant, > > I actually heard on the grape vine that it is OS X that altered its behaviour > to match Outlook's, rather than the other way around, but the end result is > the same: both clients break the rules. You're right, there may be a > preference to set this behaviour in Outlook, although it strikes me as > unlikely. > > Essentially what's happening is that every paragraph of text is sent as a > very long single line, which is MIME-encoded to get it through the email > system, the idea being that different sizes of screens make it desirable of > different clients to wrap lines at appropriate columns instead of requiring > the messages themselves contain line breaks. However well-intentioned, > though, this means that any email client which doesn't know about this > particular "Format" may do the wrong thing--it may make a long line > scrollable horizontally, clipping lines, or if it doesn't support MIME, it > will show encoding characters. It also interferes big time with quoting in > conversations; if an email client in a conversation tries to respond to such > a message, strange (and wrong) things happen: only the first line of a > paragraph is quoted, or an entire line is quoted and different programs show > it differently. It's all a mess. The standards group that specified email > has long provided a solution compatible with all software, which encodes > paragraph by leaving trailing spaces at the ends of lines intended to be > continued (a clever and elegant solution), but of course Microsoft and Apple > instead chose to simply rely on the fact that people don't do much quoting, > and that most software wraps the lines because it already supports dynamic > resizing or HTML, both of which are typical of graphical email applications. > The end result is that if you participate on any technical mailing list using > Apple Mail and most likely Outlook, you will get shouted at by lots of people > who are either using web archives, or Usenet news gateways, since their email > clients and interfaces are usually the lowest common denominator, work with > minimal resources, and are generally both the most flexible and the least > contemporary. Apple and Microsoft simply want to change the behaviour by > fiat, but many technical participants simply can't accommodate it. > > If I were you, I'd change at least one thing: go to plain text from HTML. > Unless you intend to actually send formatted messages, plain text is fine, > even for bullet points and other Unicode characters. > > Cheers, > Sabahattin > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "MacVisionaries" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
