Mail: How to Turn Off Quoted Printable?

Question

Level 2

179 points

Mail: How to Turn Off Quoted Printable?

I just realized that Mail is now sending plain text messages with quoted printable transfer encoding--and no longer uses format=flowed. I do not need "=" characters in my plain text e-mails. I greatly prefer 7 bit encoding and/or format=flowed.

Is there any way to turn off quoted printable encoding and go back to 7 bit encoding--which does not add unnecessary characters to a plain text e-mail?

I know some will say downgrade Mail to an older version. I am keeping that option open. I've looked at all of the "defaults com.apple.mail" settings in the terminal and I cannot find anything related to transfer encoding. I tried adding a content transfer encoding header with "defaults write". It wrote the header, but Mail ignored it.

Does anyone have any ideas? And why did they make this change? Why do you need to add quoted printable encoding to a 7 bit plain text message?

Thanks

MacBook Pro 15, Mac OS X (10.6.7)

Posted on May 5, 2011 4:23 PM

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Answer 1

etresoft

Level 9

50,962 points

May 5, 2011 4:27 PM in response to Auctoris

Apple hasn't made any changes like that. Apple only uses quoted printable if your message needs it. If you had composed a 7bit message, that is what Apple Mail would send.

How are you sending these messages? Are you using Rich Text or Plain text? Are you sure you don't have anything other than 7bit ASCII in the message?

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Answer 2

Auctoris Author

Level 2

179 points

May 5, 2011 4:43 PM in response to etresoft

I am sending plain text messages using only ASCII characters and it is applying quoted printable encoding. Here is the raw source of a message (with private info crossed out). You can see it is using "us-ascii" as the character set and the content type is plain text. You can also see it is using quoted printable. So you end up with a 7 bit plain text e-mail with quotable printable line breaks (i.e. =) cluttering the message.

From: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Content-Type: text/plain;

charset=us-ascii

Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

X-Smtp-Server: smtpout.secureserver.net:xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Subject: Encoding Test

X-Universally-Unique-Identifier: 5878d9f3-0fab-4506-a162-4df35311dc91

Date: Thu, 5 May 2011 19:38:39 -0400

Message-Id: <00EDD9CD-F280-42FE-96B1-C556E725CEFE@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>

To: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v1084)

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod =

tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim =

veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea =

commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate =

velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint =

occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt =

mollit anim id est laborum.=

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Answer 3

etresoft

Level 9

50,962 points

May 5, 2011 5:27 PM in response to Auctoris

If you have more than 78 characters on a single line, Apple Mail doesn't want to send it as plain text. To quote the standard: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2822.txt

2.1.1. Line Length Limits

There are two limits that this standard places on the number of

characters in a line. Each line of characters MUST be no more than

998 characters, and SHOULD be no more than 78 characters, excluding

the CRLF.

The 998 character limit is due to limitations in many implementations

which send, receive, or store Internet Message Format messages that

simply cannot handle more than 998 characters on a line. Receiving

implementations would do well to handle an arbitrarily large number

of characters in a line for robustness sake. However, there are so

many implementations which (in compliance with the transport

requirements of [RFC2821]) do not accept messages containing more

than 1000 character including the CR and LF per line, it is important

for implementations not to create such messages.

The more conservative 78 character recommendation is to accommodate

the many implementations of user interfaces that display these

messages which may truncate, or disastrously wrap, the display of

more than 78 characters per line, in spite of the fact that such

implementations are non-conformant to the intent of this

specification (and that of [RFC2821] if they actually cause

information to be lost).

It shouldn't matter what Apple Mail is doing internally. No modern e-mail client should display those '=' signs.

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Answer 4

Auctoris Author

Level 2

179 points

May 5, 2011 6:10 PM in response to etresoft

Yes, the text needs to be wrapped. But why did they change from the way they always did it using 7 bit/format flowed encoding? It worked and did not add any unecessary characters to the message. Here is an example of how they used to handle wrapping plain text, ascii-only messages. Quoted printable is not used and no uncecessary characters are added.

Message-Id: <D9BEF610-D902-408D-9DB8-C9B5FBDBB98F@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>

From: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

To: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Content-Type: text/plain;

charset=US-ASCII;

format=flowed;

delsp=yes

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

X-Smtp-Server: smtpout.secureserver.net:xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v936)

Subject: Will Wheaton

Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2010 16:54:56 -0400

"Book from Carson Beckett's personals, seen when Rodney McKay is

collecting the items from his quarters after his death in the Stargate

Atlantis Season Three episode, 'Sunday'."

Yes, most e-mail apps will read quoted printable correctly. However, when dealing with the raw source of the message (as I sometimes do), quoted printable just adds characters that don't need to be there. With 7 bit encoding, that message could be viewed on an Apple II or Commodore 64 and look exactly the same as it does on modern computers. With quoted printable, it would look garbled withe "=" characters. Project Gutenburg expresses why plain text is preferred.

So, why did this change and how can I change it back?

Thank you for taking the time to look into this.

Thanks

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Answer 5

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

118,370 points

May 5, 2011 6:26 PM in response to etresoft

I have seen a report that Apple moved from format-flowed to quoted-printable in 10.6.2 to help become more compatible with Exchange Servers.

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Answer 6

Auctoris Author

Level 2

179 points

May 5, 2011 6:32 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

That doesn't make me feel too good. We lose the simplicity and elegance of plain text e-mail because Microsoft is not competent enough to handle it. I hope we don't have to suffer a lot of regressions because of Microsoft. Given the way they do things, the entire OS would have to regress to work well with them.

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Answer 7

etresoft

Level 9

50,962 points

May 5, 2011 7:20 PM in response to Auctoris

Apple has dropped a number internet MIME e-mail standards in hopes of improving compatibility with Microsoft. While Apple still tries to comply with the standards, Apple Mail definitely does things the Microsoft way. The "format=flowed" method was never part of that standard. It is just something that Eudora came up with. Eudora is now dead and so is "format=flowed".

Unfortunately, e-mail was designed for text and text only. Even something as simple as a line longer than 78 characters can be a challenge. Wrapping lines, quoting, attachments, fonts, and colors are all hacks that have been applied over the years. You are the first person I've seen complain about "format=flowed". The standard complaint is usually that attachments don't show up in random, un-named PC programs of unknown vintage.

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Answer 8

Auctoris Author

Level 2

179 points

May 5, 2011 7:30 PM in response to etresoft

Actually, I'm not the first. See here: Format:Flowed not working in Mail 4.0. I've seen it discussed in several other places which I don't recall right now. For plain text purists, it's a big deal.

Thank you for the information.

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Answer 9

etresoft

Level 9

50,962 points

May 5, 2011 7:41 PM in response to Auctoris

Apple Mail is definitely not designed for anyone who considers themselves a "purist" 🙂

It's primary design features are messages that look halfway decent on most versions of Outlook and compatibility with Microsoft Exchange servers.

Have you tried Alpine? http://www.washington.edu/alpine/

It's the e-mail client for purists.

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Answer 10

Auctoris Author

Level 2

179 points

May 5, 2011 8:42 PM in response to etresoft

I'll take a look at that. I used Pine for a few years in the early 90s.

Thanks

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Answer 11

Auctoris Author

Level 2

179 points

May 6, 2011 5:08 PM in response to Auctoris

I found a workaround. It is not ideal but it works. If you hard wrap the message before sending it, it will be sent as 7 bit. Since there are no "soft" line breaks to encode, quoted printable is not required.

If you send a message from the gmail site (versus using Mail.app), it is formatted in this way--hard line breaks. The text does not flow, but it doesn't have unnecessary characters either.

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