> Gmail shows the mail as it was composed No. They do not. See e.g. https://mathiasbynens.be/notes/gmail-plain-text Every email program mangles emails in some way or other. Because they **have to**, for technical reasons. Plaintext *cannot* transport what you typed, exactly as you typed it. Particularly, soft linebreaks will be lost and lines consequently reformatted. > You write ... with the default settings (72 chars, flowed ... and your recipient has a mobile phone, and does not have 72 chars wide screens. Or he has a large desktop screen and has 150 wide windows. You have no idea how your recipient will read the email. If you force it on him, you may well make it unreadable for him. To prevent that, many email clients will reformat plaintext, even if you try to force a line width. Because the user might simply not have 72 char wide screens. > why Thunderbird doesn't follow the WYSIWYG concept per default. Because there is no such thing in email. You might think so, but in reality, different clients do line wrapping differently, quoting and line wrapping in quotes, "From " at the start of the line is escaped due to mbox, etc.pp. And I'm not even starting with UTF-8 character sets, quoted-printable, and so on. Esp. the line wrapping gets messy really quickly. format=flowed solved actual technical problems, which messed up plaintext emails really badly. f=f does what most people need for emails. It may not be what *you* want, or even your friends need, but what most people want. So, you can change the settings, you get what you want, and everybody is happy.
Bug 86607 Comment 65 Edit History
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> Gmail shows the mail as it was composed No. They do not. See e.g. https://mathiasbynens.be/notes/gmail-plain-text Every email program mangles emails in some way or other. Because they **have to**, for technical reasons. Plaintext *cannot* transport what you typed, exactly as you typed it. Particularly, soft linebreaks will be lost and lines consequently reformatted. > You write ... with the default settings (72 chars, flowed Even if you see in your Sent folder the same thing that you typed, doesn't mean that your recipient does. E.g. your recipient has a mobile phone, and does not have 72 chars wide screens. Or he has a large desktop screen and has 150 wide windows. You have no idea how your recipient will read the email. If you force it on him, you may well make it unreadable for him. To prevent that, many email clients will reformat plaintext, even if you try to force a line width. Because the user might simply not have 72 char wide screens. And rewrapping plaintext with hard linebreaks looks very ugly, or changes the linebreaks even more drastically and less predicable than format=flowed. > why Thunderbird doesn't follow the WYSIWYG concept per default. Because there is no such thing in email. You might think so, but in reality, different clients do line wrapping differently, quoting and line wrapping in quotes, "From " at the start of the line is escaped due to mbox, etc.pp. And I'm not even starting with UTF-8 character sets, quoted-printable, and so on. It gets very much into technical details and implementation specifics of common email programs quickly, but plaintext is not WYSIWYG at all. Esp. the line wrapping gets messy really quickly. format=flowed solved actual technical problems, which messed up plaintext emails really badly. f=f does what most people need for emails. It may not be what *you* want, or even your friends need, but what most people want. So, you can change the settings, you get what you want, and everybody is happy.
> Gmail shows the mail as it was composed No. They do not. See e.g. https://mathiasbynens.be/notes/gmail-plain-text Every email program mangles emails in some way or other. Because they **have to**, for technical reasons. Plaintext *cannot* transport what you typed, exactly as you typed it. Particularly, soft linebreaks will be lost and lines consequently reformatted. > You write ... with the default settings (72 chars, flowed Even if you see in your Sent folder the same thing that you typed, doesn't mean that your recipient does. E.g. your recipient has a mobile phone, and does not have 72 chars wide screens. Or he has a large desktop screen and has 150 wide windows. You have no idea how your recipient will read the email. If you force it on him, you may well make it unreadable for him. To prevent that, many email clients will reformat plaintext, even if you try to force a line width. Because the user might simply not have 72 char wide screens. That's why some mail readers change the plaintext linebreaks even more drastically and less predicable than format=flowed. format=flowed is precisely and well defined what should happen. It distinguishes between soft and hard line breaks. > why Thunderbird doesn't follow the WYSIWYG concept per default. Because there is no such thing in email. You might think so, but in reality, different clients do line wrapping differently, quoting and line wrapping in quotes, "From " at the start of the line is escaped due to mbox, etc.pp. And I'm not even starting with UTF-8 character sets, quoted-printable, and so on. It gets very much into technical details and implementation specifics of common email programs quickly, but plaintext is not WYSIWYG at all. Esp. the line wrapping gets messy really quickly. format=flowed solved actual technical problems, which messed up plaintext emails really badly. f=f does what most people need for emails. It may not be what *you* want, or even your friends need, but what most people want. So, you can change the settings, you get what you want, and everybody is happy.