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Re: Mail.app font for messages - Yosemite

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On 2015-05-10, dyera@not.freeshell.org.invalid <dyera@not.freeshell.org.invalid> wrote:
> On 2015-05-06, Jolly Roger <jollyroger@pobox.com> wrote in 
><cquim5F9iviU1@mid.individual.net>:
>
>> On 2015-05-06, dyera@not.freeshell.org.invalid 
><dyera@not.freeshell.org.invalid> wrote:
>
>>> I figured that setting the message font in Preferences would allow me to 
>>> skip any rich text or html formatting that came through, and not have to 
>>> increase text size on so many messages. Am I way off-base here?
>>
>> The setting does not apply to HTML emails. It applies only to plain text
>> messages.
>
> Yeah, guess so. On first glance the preference setting gives one the idea 
> that it can be controlled.

Yes. This definitely could be improved for clarity!

>>> It also seemed to me that there ought to be an option to display plain 
>>> text under View -> Messages but that option is not there. It may be 
>>> something I recall from 10.6.
>>
>> I remember there being an option to display plain text portions of HTML
>> mails in past versions of Mail (Command-Option-P, IIRC), but don't see
>> it in the more recent versions. Not sure Apple would see fit to remove
>> that useful feature. : ( Of course it didn't work for messages that did
>> not have a text/plain part. Some don't.
>>
>> There used to be a hidden preference to instruct Mail to display plain
>> text parts automatically, but reportedly recent versions no longer honor
>> the setting:
>>
>> defaults write com.apple.mail PreferPlainText -bool TRUE
>
> I tried it, but after scrolling through several e-mails in my Inbox I 
> don't see any difference. Of course, maybe there isn't a plain text part 
> to display as you have mentioned.

It's also possible it simply does not work anymore. : (

> Some people that I e-mail regularly have clients that notice my responses 
> are in plain text, so their replies come back plain as well. It is the 
> first e-mail in the thread that can be hard to read. Web clients don't 
> seem to be as smart though - in particular, my sister's AOL webmail.

Yeah. Apple dropped the ball on this one. There should be a simple way
to make Mail automatically display plain text if that's what you prefer.

>> Luckily, the vast majority of HTML messages I receive are advertising
>> messages, which aren't very important to me. I usually just adjust the
>> size of the messages individually if needed. I suppose if it bothered me
>> enough, I'd look into using a third-party email client.
>
> My favorite e-mail client is alpine but all my attempts to find a version 
> I could install with my limited unix skills have failed. So either I use 
> Mail right on the Mac or log into SDF to use alpine.

I haven't ever used Alpine, but it looks like you should be able to
compile it easily, and there do seem to be pre-compiled OS X binaries
available as well:

<http://www.washington.edu/alpine/acquire/>
<https://www.madboa.com/geek/pine-macosx/>
<http://osx.iusethis.com/app/alpine>

>> I'm not sure if the current versions of Mail respect this, but there is
>> a hidden preference setting that allows you to specify the maximum font
>> size for HTML messages - you might give it a shot to see if it helps
>> you:
>>
>> defaults write com.apple.mail MinimumHTMLFontSize 13
>
> Good idea, but as far as I can tell it didn't work. I tried 16 for a more 
> dramatic effect.

I'm betting that hidden preference setting is no longer honored as well.

> Thanks for the suggestions. I've got an iMac still running 10.6 and Mail 
> mostly did what I wanted there. Seems like now Apple prioritizes the 
> sender's control of e-mail appearance over the reader's preferences.

Yeah, that sucks, IMO. If you really care, you should take just a moment
and give Apple feedback about it, in the hopes they'll see fit to fix
this in a future update:

<https://www.apple.com/feedback/>

> I'm glad tiny font size is the only issue I'm having, so I can just 
> increase it. It would be a bummer if someone who liked to copy current web 
> design and send me light gray text on a white background.

Yeah, there's really no substitute for plain text!

-- 
E-mail sent to this address may be devoured by my ravenous SPAM filter.
I often ignore posts from Google. Use a real news client instead.

JR

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Thread

Mail.app font for messages - Yosemite dyera@not.freeshell.org.invalid - 2015-05-06 04:51 +0000
  Re: Mail.app font for messages - Yosemite Jolly Roger <jollyroger@pobox.com> - 2015-05-06 13:19 +0000
    Re: Mail.app font for messages - Yosemite dyera@not.freeshell.org.invalid - 2015-05-10 18:52 +0000
      Re: Mail.app font for messages - Yosemite Jolly Roger <jollyroger@pobox.com> - 2015-05-12 01:06 +0000
  Re: Mail.app font for messages - Yosemite Lewis <g.kreme@gmail.com.dontsendmecopies> - 2015-05-07 20:49 +0000
    Re: Mail.app font for messages - Yosemite dyera@not.freeshell.org.invalid - 2015-05-10 18:56 +0000
      Re: Mail.app font for messages - Yosemite Lewis <g.kreme@gmail.com.dontsendmecopies> - 2015-05-12 05:43 +0000
        Re: Mail.app font for messages - Yosemite Jolly Roger <jollyroger@pobox.com> - 2015-05-12 14:04 +0000
          Re: Mail.app font for messages - Yosemite Lewis <g.kreme@gmail.com.dontsendmecopies> - 2015-05-12 14:28 +0000

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