On 7 May 2026, at 13:35, froup wrote:
On 7 May 2026, at 10:15, Randall Gellens wrote:
On 3 May 2026, at 14:00, froup via mailmate wrote:
Hi,
I recently discovered [this
article](https://vxlabs.com/2019/08/25/format-flowed-with-long-lines/),
which suggests using `format=flowed` with a maximum line length of
998.
Doing this allows clients that support `format=flowed` to reflow the
long lines while also making bad clients such as Outlook to
dynamically wrap the whole long line at frame boundary to avoid them
interpreting soft line breaks as hard line breaks (since there
won’t be any soft or hard line breaks unless your paragraph is
longer than 998 characters).
I’m still using `format=flowed`, and would like to practice this
advice with MailMate. However, I don’t know how to make MailMate
wrap the _raw_ message at 998 characters, or is that even possible.
I tried setting `View > Soft Wrap Column` to 998 but that does not
affect the _raw_ message sent over SMTP.
I’d appreciate any help on this.
The idea of Format=Flowed is that, by soft-wrapping messages at below
80 characters, the message can be treated as non-F=F by clients that
don't understand F=F.
--Randall
Hi Randall,
Yes, that is exactly the problem. For example, Outlook would interpret
these soft wraps as hard wraps and causes lines to break at, say, 80
characters, which looks very poor (especially on mobile devices).
What I want is to insert soft wraps only when line length exceeds SMTP
limit (998 characters), so a not-so-long paragraph (like this one)
appears as a whole line in the raw message. Since there is no line
breaks anymore in these paragraphs, even a bad client like Outlook can
just break lines at the frame boundary dynamically like how it treats
non f=f messages, leading to a more natural looking.
Meanwhile, a decent client such as MailMate capable of handling f=f
can just reflow the lines according to user’s preference, since the
message is still f=f. For instance, maybe someone using a terminal
mail client want to always wrap lines at 80 characters, and their f=f
capable client can reflow my message like that even if the raw message
contains only very long lines.
In short, people using decent clients see my message as good as
always, while people using Outlook don’t ask me again “why your
email looks weird?” Citing from the article I cited in the
beginning: “your plaintext email will be reflowed by a much larger
group of recipients and therefore appear substantially less terrible
on their displays.”
The Format=Flowed RFCs discuss the issue of mobile devices and small
screens; it's one of the main reasons for F=F. I suppose soft-breaking
at 998 is a lot less bad in today's world than back when F=F was
created. I don't know if MailMate has a hidden preference for where to
soft-wrap F=F. I added Benny to the Bcc list.
--Randall
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