Rich text not working...

Under preferences in Mail, I have the message format set to Rich Text and under fonts and colours; I have the message font set to Verdana from the 'windows office compatible' fonts. However, not a single email client that I am sending messages to is interpreting this font. Outlook is simply displaying the text in Times New Roman, which looks awful. Why is this not working?

Also, when I send a message with a 'windows compatible' attachment, outlook cuts off all of the text after the attachment and shows it as a HTML attachment???

Mac OS X (10.6.7)

Posted on Apr 9, 2011 1:44 PM

Apr 10, 2011 1:16 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

Tom Gewecke wrote:
I'm curious about why the html part of the "rich text" message is technically an "attachment". Is the plain text part also an attachment?

It depends. If there is a plain text portion following an image or other true attachment, then that plain text section is also an attachment. Anything that isn't 100% plain text content is represented as an attachment.

My understanding of the term "rich text" is that is refers to any kind of markup. Apple used .rtf for "rich text" in Panther and change to .html in Tiger.

The MIME mail standard defines "rich text" as a specific type of text content that supports fonts, styles, and colours. There is also a follow up type called "enriched" that was never used much because Microsoft started using HTML.

I don't have any big problem myself with Mail doing what it does, but I think it is a mistake for Apple to create this false expectation.

Feel free to submit feedback or an enhancement request to Apple. I was just paraphrasing Apple's response to my similar enhancement request from 2008.