Re: format=flowed and extra spaces

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
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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