Why isn't Gmail using quotation marks?

Question

Why does the web version of Gmail bypass its mail content without marking the place with = , which makes email processing difficult:

See the source mail content sent by gmail:

and this email is sent by Mac OS X Mail:

Edited by:

As Brandon Invergo said they use a different coding method. I'm sorry I said GMail is not decent.

Edited 2:

Their original content:

They are wrapped in Gmail, I think this is consistent with the word-wrap algorithm .

Answer 1

So, there are two separate questions, and GMail does one of them “differently”, and one of them is “wrong”.

The first is the coding problem. You're right; GMail uses the UTF-8 character set for regular text messages by default, while Mac OS X Mail uses the Quoted Printable, which is the encoding for transmitting MIME content.

The second problem is word wrap. RFC 2822 states that strings should be no more than 78 characters (not including CR + LF. Google solves this problem (quite aggressively) by introducing a hard word wrap that looks ugly when displayed on smaller screens, etc. Most other email clients use quoted print features to introduce soft line breaks to comply with this recommendation, which allows e-mail clients to distinguish between “hard” (that is, custom) and “soft” (that is, client-entered) line breaks.

There is no reason GMail cannot use this agreement with Quoted Printable in place of UTF-8 or use Format = Flowed (RFC 2646, FAQ) to achieve the same results. It was something like this, and it's a little silly that GMail, in my opinion, forces the word "wrap" by text users.

A good primer for this whole situation is here .

• Quote for print.
• MIME Content Transfer Encoding
• RFC 2822
• CR + LF
• RFC 2646
• Format = Current Frequently Asked Questions

Answer 2

GMail sends text using the UTF-8 character encoding as specified in the content type. Mac email client sends using Quoted-printable encoding. Both are used to send characters outside the ASCII range. GMail sends 8-bit clear messages, while Mail sends 7-bit messages. 7-bit messages should be more economical, but I would doubtfully say that an email client that does not use them is somehow not "decent".