Re: format=flowed and extra spaces

On 2019-10-07, Gary Johnson wrote:
> On 2019-10-07, martin f krafft wrote:
> > Hello list,
> >
> > I've set up Vim in tandem with Mutt to compose format=flowed emails,
> > i.e. using &fo+=aw in Vim.
> >
> > I'm also in the habit of using numbered and bulletted lists in emails
> > a lot.
> >
> > Unfortunately, the two don't seem to work together well, or I am
> > doing something wrong.
> >
> > For instance, consider the following:
> >
> > 1. This is the first item, spanning two rows because the text is a
> > bit longer than 80 characters, or whatever &tw is set to.
> >
> > 2. This is the second item.
> >
> > The way I have Vim configured means that the second line of the first
> > item is properly indented, i.e. I see:
> >
> > | 1. This is … |
> > | bit long… |
> >
> > At first, I thought those spaces at the start of the second line are
> > "local" in that they are only needed for presentation. However, when
> > Mutt creates a MIME message, it includes those spaces!
> >
> > | 1. This is … text is a=20 |
> > | ···bit longer |
> >
> > This means that recipients who don't use exactly the same font and
> > window size as I do might see the following instead:
> >
> > | 1. This is … text |
> > | is a bit longer |
> >
> > So there is no indent, but there are multiple subsequent spaces in
> > the middle of the line, which makes the whole thing harder to read.
> >
> > I think all of this would be avoided if Vim didn't add those spaces
> > it needs for indenting (presentation) in format=flowed mode.
> >
> > Is this possible? Or am I doing something fundamentally wrong?
>
> The idea of format=flowed is to allow email messages to be displayed
> nicely by email clients that do not support format=flowed as well as
> by those that do. Neither Vim nor mutt should do anything to
> messages to corrupt their contents. In particular, neither should
> automatically remove any leading spaces. See RFC 3676.
>
> Vim takes care of wrapping lines at 78 columns and adds a single
> trailing space to inter-paragraph line breaks. It can also handle

Oops. "inter-paragraph" should be "intra-paragraph".

> formatting quoted paragraphs. That's all it should do.
>
> Mutt takes care of space-stuffing and does something with quoted
> blocks, but I've forgotten what. That's all it should do.
>
> It is the responsibility of the receiving agent to reformat
> format=flowed text as it sees fit. How it does that is not
> specified by the RFC.
>
> If some receiving agent claims to support format=flowed, yet blindly
> includes sequences of spaces in the middle of flowed lines, as in
> your third example, I would say that agent is broken.
>
> Also, your second example suggests that mutt is using
> quoted-printable encoding. RFC 3676 says that quoted-printable
> encoding "SHOULD NOT be used for Format=Flowed unless absolutely
> necessary...."
>
> Regards,
> Gary

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