Mail client tips

The Linux kernel community uses a number of email lists to send patches, review patches, and discuss changes to the Linux kernel. See

Many community members use mail clients that do not handle HTML or attachments or weird character encodings or weird e-mail formats very well. The mailing list software for the main kernel mailing list (LKML) considers HTML to be a sign of SPAM [1]. Also, it is essential in sending and reviewing patches that exact text, spacing and line endings are preserved. This is a feature that many modern e-mail clients do not do, by default.

This page exists to describe ways to configure modern email clients to be well-behaved for use in participating on Linux kernel mailing lists. More tips on this topic can also be found in the kernel source repository, in the file [2]

Outlook inline comments

Here is some information on how to configure outlook to use "> " to preface replied-to text in inline responses.

• https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Reply-with-inline-comments-within-the-original-message-text-5bc44105-aeb2-49e2-8239-5aeeff52e5a7
  • Note that you set "When Replying to a message" to "prefix each line of the original message", and you set "When forwarding a message" to "prefix each line of the original message".

These instructions worked for me on Outlook in Office Professinoal Plus 2013

* click on File on the menu bar
* select Options on pane that appears
* select Mail on left pane
* under Compose Messages, select change the setting for "Compose messages in this format" to "Plain text"
* Under Replies and Forwards
  * Set "When replying to a message" to "Prefix each line of the original message"
  * Set "When forwarding a message" to "Prefix each line of the original message:
  * Set "Preface each line in a plain-text message with:" to "> "  (greater-than sign followed by a space)

The above instructions work when the message is received in plain text. When a message is received in HTML format, it appears to be impossible to do inline or post-message comments.

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From Andrew Ducker at http://superuser.com/a/587558/597172

You can cause Outlook to format all inbound mail at plan text as follows:

* File
* Options
* Trust Center
* Trust Center Settings
* Email Security
* Read As Plain Text.

This means they all appear as plain text, so replies go out as plain text, which means that you get proper indenting (using ">") if you've set that up.

You can still display the HTML original for messages where you want to, by clicking on the "This message was converted to plain text" message on the header and switching to a different format.

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Tim - Note that once you select the option to "View as HTML", you cannot switch back to plain text again. (At least, I couldn't find an option to do it. The info box that appears no longer has any options for changing the view formatting.)

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In Outlook, if you reply, you may be put in a composer pain in the main outlook window, or it may create a new window to compose your response. In the standalone window, you can control the output format by selecting:

* Format Text
* in the "format" section, select "Aa Plain Text"

If it starts your resonse composition in the main outlook window, there is an option to "Pop Out" the message into a standalone window. If you want to always start responses in a standalone window, set the option:

* File
* Options
* Mail
* Replies and Forwards sectino
* check Open replies and forwards in a new window

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There's an option to prevent Outlook from removing extraneous line feeds. See

* File
* Options
* Mail
* Message Format
* Remove extra line breaks in plain text messages

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Note that in that same section of options, there is control over the column to wrap plain text at:

* Automatically wrap text at character [   ]

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There's an way to prevent the first letter of a new line from being automatically capitalized. Change the autocorrect setting:

* File
* Options
* Mail in left-side menu
* Compose Messages (section)
* Spelling and Autocorrect button
* Proofing in left-side menu
* AutoCorrect options section
* AutoCorrect Options button
* AutoCorrect tab
* uncheck Capitalize first letter of sentences