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by funnybookbinder 1380 days ago
I run into difficulties with text-wrapping in plain-text emails. If there are nested quotations, the wrapping can get jumbled, especially if reading on a small screen like a smartphone. Don't have that issue with html emails. Am I doing something wrong?
4 comments

No, the specifics of making sure plain text email wraps correctly are just complex enough it might as well be html email. It's 2022, and in this day and age the concept of sticking to 80 columns of plain text is outdated and mostly reactionary.
I was keen to try out 100% pure plain text emails and ran into this problem too. The reading experience on mobile wasn't good, and that's increasingly where people are. Very spartan, minimal HTML resolves all the problems, but then you're back to HTML.
If all that was used was basic HTML formatting tags, I'd be fine with it. But that's not what it is.
Sure, but if there were enough motivation and interest from various broader communities (not just in email, but also security, say) maybe a "Gemini" style approach could work. I would be very happy for email to be limited to a Markdown-style subset of HTML.
You're not doing anything wrong, it's the people who insist on hard-wrapping emails they send are who's wrong.
It means the sender did not use format=flowed
format=flowed doesn't work on all readers. I have format=flowed turned on and it still doesn't display as properly wrapped on various email readers.