On Thu, Feb 26, 2026 at 05:09:38PM +0100, Rene Kita wrote:
On Thu, Feb 26, 2026 at 12:19:48PM +0800, Kevin J. McCarthy wrote:
This option, when unset, modifies the display of email headers when
$weed is enabled.

The default behavior is to unfold headers when $weed is set, and to
leave them folded when $weed is unset (in effect, displaying them as
they appear in the original email, subject to screen width wrapping).

When $weed_unfold is unset and $weed is set, the headers will be
weeded, but will not be unfolded: displaying as they appear in the
original email.

The option could be useful for those who 'unignore' long headers, such
as from Spam Assassin, that are formatted to be more readable in the
original email, but become unreadable when unfolded/refolded to screen
width.

This left me a bit confused, but maybe it's just me. Just to clarify:
$weed_unfold unset is the new behaviour while setting $weed_unfold is
the old default? If so, wouldn't it make more sense to use $weed_fold?

To be clear, the default behavior is unchanged by this patch.

But I agree it is a bit confusing. The *sending* MUA (and hops that add headers) fold the headers to be within the 72 char limit.

Currently, with $weed set (the default) Mutt will unfold those headers. So, with an exaggeratedly small fold width for example purposes, a folded subject line such as

  Subject: This is the
   subject line

will be displayed as

  Subject: This is the subject line

When you toggle off weed via 'h' <display-toggle-weed>', the subject will not be unfolded. It will be shown as it is in the original (subject to folding by your display width). So you will then see:

  Subject: This is the
   subject line

along with all the headers in the email.

So this new option by default preserves that behavior. $weed_unfold is set by default, and so when $weed is on, the headers will be unfolded as before.

If you put 'unset weed_unfold' in your muttrc, then the subject and other headers you've unignored will be displayed without the unfolding:

  Subject: This is the
   subject line

Also, unfolding in that case means that a nicely formatted header, a
header that goes over multiple lines to be read by humans, is 'unfolded'
to be a single line header, right?

The ticket creator was not happy because their SpamAssasin headers were "nicely" formatted, and Mutt was unfolding them and making them less readable. But that's not necessarily the case for all headers.

If you still find the option name confusing, I could invert it, to something like $weed_leave_folded, default unset. But the option doesn't haven't anything to do with "folding".

I hope that makes it clearer!  :-)

--
Kevin J. McCarthy
GPG Fingerprint: 8975 A9B3 3AA3 7910 385C  5308 ADEF 7684 8031 6BDA

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