Hello fellow mactalkers!

I have an issue with Mail that I am hoping you can help with. I have done a search but found nothing relevant.

I have the following fonts setup in mail.app but when I send the email the recipient receives it in the standard font for the system. I have tested this by sending an email to myself on my windows machine and it just comes out in times new roman.



It looks as if the preferences for mail only change how the email is SEEN but not how it is sent. Anyone else getting this?

What you state is correct, its working as designed. If you want the email to retain formating and font size atleast (and colour changes in fonts). Then you must send the email in the Rich Text Format, which can be done after starting a new email and selecting Format menu and make rich text.

Of course the font you use may not exist on windows, so it will be replaced with something similar, but the font size and colour changes in a rich text email will be retained.

has anyone worked out how to attach files as icons and not as previews?

(tiger 10.4.11)

I'm fairly certain that internet email only supports a very limited number of fonts: eg. a generic sans serif font (typically Arial), and generic serif font (typically Times New Roman), a monospace font, etc. - because you never know what fonts the recipient has installed.

Hmmm this is annoying.

Looks like no matter what font I choose, it will always revert to Time new roman on the viewers client. I even tried trusty Arial and it didnt work

This has nothing at all to do with what email supports. It depends on what fonts the receiving computer can render. If you create a rich text or html email, it's the same as creating a rich text or html file and sending it to someone.

Essentially what you're trying to achieve is more viable if you send an html email, where the fonts and artwork will remain the same because they are being 'called' from a server, similar to how a website works except it displays in your email progamme.

I know I'll probably be flamed here, but in my view OS X Mail does not do mail formatting at all well.

Microsoft Outlook has managed to create and compose html email that interoperate well with various mail clients for years -- Apple does not seem to be able to do the same with Mail.

If anyone has any tips on how to get Mail to compose messages with a nominated font that are viewable on other users machines (Windows and Mac) I'd love to hear about them.

Hired goon. I use Jaguar and Panther but the method should be the same.
Compose your email.
Add attachments.
Right click on the attachment and select " View as Icon".
The attached image will now reduce down to an icon instead of a big preview. You have to go to each attachment and do this though. I have not found a way in an image file to be attached by selecting " Command-I " and changing the preview or anything else or in Mails preferences to change this globally.
If anyone else knows of a simpler way then let us know.

Stewie

This is just the way that the Mail.app works --- if you want to see the attachment as an icon then right click (or command click) on the attachment - the pop-up menu will give you the choice to view as icon.

You're probably right.

However, for some reason I thought that when your mail client converted the fancy text in your outbound email to html, it would choose from a small list of "common fonts" (for want of a better phrase) to convert to - based on the nearest match.

So you're saying that if I choose a specific font in mail, the html code in the SMTP message will describe that actual font?

Who needs email formatting, as email in the most basic form was never meant to be formatted. I still consider if a plain text medium and dressing it up wastes bandwidth and causes problems between clients.

If only they stuck to the original standard of plain text.

All it will do is send a font name. If that font name (and thus, the font) does not exist on the recipient system, it will default to the ... default font. No "closest match" or "conversion" or anything like that because, let's face it, it's overly complicated for sending a simple email.