Re: Sending mail: line wrapping and quoted-printable encoding

[Radu Butoi]

Hi Gregor,

Gregor Zattler <telegraph@gmx.net> writes:

> Hi Radu, emacs users,
> * Radu Butoi <rbutoi@gmail.com> [2020-04-25; 20:19]:
>> I've recently set up my mail in Emacs, and it works well. Gmail, though,
>> doesn't support [1] format=flowed, resulting in the hard-to-read comb
>> effect when viewing on mobile, which I'd like to avoid. Doing some more
>> research, I see that the quoted-printable encoding (which Gmail does
>> support [2], and I've confirmed) can also be used to avoid hard line
>> breaks while keeping under the line length limit.
>
> actually I read the two resources you provided as gmail displays
> format=flowed formatted emails but does not allow a web interface
> user to send such email.
>
> Sine you want to send emails with emacs everything should be fine?

It has worked in the past, but the redesign from ~two years ago removed
it again. Apologies on the misleading link -- here's [1] some from more
recently. I also confirmed it doesn't work.

> [... 22 lines deleted ...]
>> More generally, since I'm new to terminal-based email, what is the
>> etiquette around hard-wrapping (or not)? Would it be rude to send
>> paragraphs as one logical line (wrapped-in-transmission by
>> quoted-printable) and expect people to soft-wrap?
>
> I send emails with lines no longer than 65 characters and my mail
> client (notmuch/message/emacs) allows me to fill the paragraphs
> while I type.

Same here (notmuch), using the default message-fill-column of 72. I also
set notmuch-wash-wrap-lines-length so that incoming long lines are
wrapped. Is this a fair expectation to set on everyone? It's one of the
first things I did, since I still get converted HTML mail that would
otherwise take up the full width of my screen.

> I assume today's smartphones to be more than capable of showing 65
> chars in one line.

I'm afraid not: here's [2] how your email looks like on my Pixel 4 XL, a
considerably big phone.

Thanks for your input,
Radu

[1]:
https://github.com/legoscia/messages-are-flowing/issues/9#issuecomment-565504136,
which references
https://cpbotha.net/2016/09/27/thunderbird-support-of-rfc-3676-formatflowed-is-half-broken/
and https://vxlabs.com/2019/08/25/format-flowed-with-long-lines/

[2]: https://photos.app.goo.gl/Rw4gBdhMH4rqRYsS6