Can't force Mail.app to compose in plain text in 10.10.3

And now this doesn't work either! Very unhappy!

defaults write com.apple.mail PreferPlainText -bool TRUE

The choice of plain text in the preferences has no effect on the text substitutions. Disable them from the Edit menu.

A good point but I reckon this discussion is less about "text substitutions" and more about forcing us to compose messages in rich text I reckon.

Daniel Harris wrote:

A good point but I reckon this discussion is less about "text substitutions" and more about forcing us to compose messages in rich text I reckon.

No, it is about how the system-wide text substitutions have no idea about your choice to compose in plain text.

Oh, I see, if you have non-plain text characters as substitutions then this will make the reply switch to rich text?

Daniel Harris wrote:

Oh, I see, if you have non-plain text characters as substitutions then this will make the reply switch to rich text?

Yes

Thanks. But can you tell me how to access the plain text versions of an email? The old key commands are listed at:

Mail (Mountain Lion): Keyboard shortcuts

Have gone!!!!

I can't see a way to view that besides viewing the Raw Source (cmd-opt-U). The Plain Text alternative will have this as the start of the content:

Content-Type: text/plain;

The Plain Text alternative would only exist if the sender's email client added that section in the message, but I don't know if that is something that has been dropped by any client software. The handful I looked at that I received all still had the section, except for the pure html messages from stores.

Shame on Apple for dropping those menu options. Time for some feedback...

Send Apple feedback. They won't answer, but at least will know there is a problem. If enough people send feedback, it may get the problem solved sooner.

Mail Feedback

Daniel Harris wrote:

Oh, I see, if you have non-plain text characters as substitutions then this will make the reply switch to rich text?

Your use of the terms "rich" and "plain" text is mistaken. Plain text these days means text without any information about formatting in it, such as the font name, font size, bold, italic, etc. When you send plain text, the recipient's machine determines what font gets used, etc. Rich text is text which does contain such formatting information, it is really html underneath, and the recipient should normally see the font which you have chosen.

Curly (smart) quotes and punctuation have nothing to do with that distinction. They don't make a text "rich" and converting "rich" to "plain" (or viewing the "plain" version) will not remove them. If you could confine your message to ASCII encoding, they would not be present, but email apps don't normally have any option for that. As mentioned by others, if they cause a problem, you have to turn off the substitution system which is producing them.

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James Hsieh wrote:

Then Mail.app will *really* send everything in "plain text".

Smart punctuation doesn't really have anything to do with "plain text". Whether your email is "plain" or "rich" depends on whether or not it contains (html) info that tells the reader what font, font size, and font style is supposed to be displayed.