Rich Text/Plain Text

From off the web:

"Plain Text - A plain text message is an email message that does not include colors, fonts or formatting. It is the most basic type of email that is easily readable by all e-mail clients today. It does not support pictures displayed directly in the message body (although you can include them as attachments).


Rich Text - Outlook Rich Text Format (RTF) is a Microsoft format that only some e-mail programs understand, mainly the Microsoft Office Outlook clients. You can use RTF when sending messages within a company that uses Microsoft Exchange Server (i.e. OSU). RTF supports text formatting, including bullets, alignment, and links.


HTML Format – HTML supports text formatting, numbering, bullets, alignment, horizontal lines, pictures (including backgrounds), HTML styles, stationery, signatures, and linking to Web pages. This type of format provides the greatest range of formatting possibilities."

If you are emailing to Windows and Outlook people, you should probably use RTF. As it says in the Plain Text description, you can't put pictures in the body of the email - you can only "attach" them to the email in the Plain Text option. The best thing to do is try either and choose the one that works for you.

Since you are running Jaguar, Jaguar and Panther Mail do not support composing in HTML and this includes when forwarding a message received that was composed in HTML.

Since Jaguar and Panther Mail do not support composing or forwarding HTML, you can't embed images or photos in the message body anyway.

RTF with Tiger Mail is really HTML and although Tiger Mail does not include an HTML composer/editor, you can copy/paste HTML format from a web page and forward HTML received.

Images/photos and single page PDF attachments are revealed as inline or viewed in place within the body of the message by default which cannot be turned off. This applies to received and sent messages which is not the same as being embedded. Embedded requires HTML and an embedded attachment is not a true attachment. All Mail.app versions render HTML received but you cannot attach a photo or image as embedded with Jaguar or Panther Mail so it doesn't matter if you use RTF or Plain Text in regards to photo/image or single page PDF attachments which appear as inline or viewed in place within the body of the message by default regardless.

When you use Plain Text for message composition, the receiving mail client renders the text in whatever font the reader chooses.

IMO, everyone should use Plain Text for message composition. Messages would be boring to some but the majority if not all problems experienced with email would be eliminated if HTML was banned from message composition.

So is what you're saying is we're basically out of luck when we want to forward e-mails that have embedded pictures in them? It really bugs me when my friends say, "all I got was a grey box"! I want to be able to forward some of the wonderful, funny e-mails I receive!

Blueberry I-Book Mac OS X (10.2.x)

So is what you're saying is we're basically out of
luck when we want to forward e-mails that have
embedded pictures in them?

Are you really running 10.2? If so, pretty soon you will be 3 major OS and Mail versions behind, and there might be a lot of things you can't do the way you want. For email, you might want to try another app like Thunderbird and see if it will do the trick with forwarding.

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/