Re: [PATCH] Documentation/email-clients.txt: clarify Thunderbird section

Alan Jenkins
2009-12-10T16:25:26Z

jim owens wrote:
> I don't have a problem with your patch, but it is not true
> that you need to edit the prefs.js to disable line wrap.
>
> I did this in the gui to fix my own patch sending,
> under "Composition" you can set the wrap = 0.
>
> While changing format=flowed does require editing the file,
> on my version of Thunderbird, 2.0.0.23, it isn't clear how
> it breaks the patch to leave it flowed.
>
> And I have never used HTML, Preformat.
>
> jim
>
> Though now that I have said that, Andrew will probably
> tell me the patch I sent is broken ;)
>

/google

The RFC for format=flowed says that it should escape lines which start
with a space (by "space stuffing" - prepending an additional space). So
in theory it should completely break patches. And indeed it does
<http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/java-patches/2003-q2/msg00315.html>

Using HTML preformat in current versions of Thunderbird appears to send
with a format=flowed content-type, and then violates the RFC by not
performing any space-stuffing.

So if I look at format=flowed patch in my Sent email folder, I see that
the message viewer correctly strips the first leading space in each
line. I.e. it breaks if you use copy+paste to get the patch out of
Thunderbird (or any other format=flowed aware client). File->Save As
preserves the spaces though, allowing the patch to be applied.

Regards
Alan "Don't you feel better knowing that"