[MlMt] Tab stops and previews of multiple selected messages

[Randall Gellens]

On 2 May 2019, at 2:07, Benny Kjær Nielsen wrote:

> On 1 May 2019, at 23:09, Randall Gellens wrote:
>
>> Is there an option to convert tabs into spaces when composing mail?
>
> No, but maybe there should be. I haven't really given tabs in emails 
> much thought.

I rarely use tabs, but when I do, it's to align text typically within a 
set of lines (poor man's table).

> In general, I think the receiving email client should be in charge of 
> how an email is displayed.

If sending plain text, I think giving the sender the option of 
converting tabs to spaces makes sense.  Otherwise, a sender might see a 
tab as four spaces, and format a series of lines that way, but the 
sender has tabs at eight spaces and hence the lines are all messed up 
and folded onto multiple lines.  The receiver likely wouldn't even think 
of tabs as being a cause, they'd just think the sender sent garbage.

> The exception would be if the sender uses tabs in plain text to align 
> something *not* at the beginning of a line. In this case, it would 
> make sense to enforce a particular tab size by converting it into 
> spaces. Then it might also make sense to generate HTML which enforces 
> the use of a fixed-width font when the message is displayed.

I agree that sounds like it would be a good way to handle it, now that 
HTML support is ubiquitous.

--Randall