Re: Manual line breaks in emails

On 2026-03-25, Dale wrote:
[...]
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
-------------------------------------------^^^^^^^^^^^^^
[...]
> On 3/25/26 11:50 AM, Dave Sizer wrote:
>> Thanks everyone for the responses. Reading them I realized that I had been
>> fixated on the problems that 70-80 char wrapping presented on narrower
>> clients, like smartphones in portrait mode. I had completely neglected to
>> think of the other side, where the client is *wider* than that, and it
>> makes total sense why you would want to enforce a width in those cases
>> (which as mentioned is pretty much every other case *except* smartphones).
>>
>> I guess now I just wish that I had a better way to read these plaintext
>> mails on my smartphone.
>
> I think it would be nice if email clients sent unwrapped.  Leave it as
> written, if even the client wraps for the sender to view while typing
> it in.  Then when it is sent, the sent folder copy wraps as requested
> by the sender for local viewing.  Likely the same setting as when a
> email is received as well.  When a email client receives a email on
> the other end, it then wraps according to the setting of the email
> client of the person receiving the email.  This can happen on
> desktops, laptops, cell phones, tablets or any other device with a
> email client.
>
> If it was done this way, the person sending can view as they wish, the
> person receiving can view and read as they wish.  If a person is on a
> desktop or laptop, or even a tablet thingy, that has a wider screen,
> they can view it wide or narrow as they see fit.  They can also view
> it on a cell phone with a view mode that works for that device.  By
> doing it this way, everybody will be happy.  Senders can have their
> settings.  Receivers can have there view settings that work on the
> device they are using at the time.  They can even have different
> settings for each device based on the display size.
>
> Given the large number of email clients tho, I doubt this will ever
> happen.  Even if someone who could start this process thought it was a
> nifty idea and read this, getting other email client devs to make
> their client work this way could take ages.


I think what you're describing *is* format=flowed, which your message is
using. The difference being just that it gets (at least usually) sent
wrapped and so clients which don't support it still get reasonably
wrapped text, instead of having to cope with unwrapped long lines.


> Basically, the only purpose of the return/enter/new line key would be
> to make new paragraphs.  I can only imagine the problems this method
> might solve.  Of course, it might cause other problems as well that
> I'm not aware of.  It sounds like a good idea tho.  If the email
> clients on each device handles wrapping according to the individual
> device settings, everyone gets what they want.
>
> Now someone come up with a list of problems this would cause that I'm
> clueless about.  ROFL
>
> Dale
>
> :-)  :-)
>
>

-- 
Nuno Silva