It sounds to me like you are saying you need to specify the font (not character set) used to render text-based email.
I'm fairly sure you can't do that. It is the responsibility of the mail reader to know that text-based emails need to be rendered in fixed-width fonts. My personal mail reader (evolution) does this correctly.
Maybe it is possible to configure your mail reader to not show text-email in a fixed width font, and maybe some mail readers are broken out-of-the-box ... but still, I don't think this is your problem.
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You have few options, encode the message in a format that allows for describing format (HTML/RTF) or don't expect the format to be similar on all email clients. HTML/RTF is not supported on all clients, so it may be worthwhile to encode a file attachment with the format you want preserved -- ie a pdf with the data formatted as you would like it to be.
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charset is (mostly) orthogonal to font. Don't think there is a standard way to do this, though the particular mail clients you have to deal with (what are they) just possibly may offer a way. | [reply] |
If they don't have HTML in their email client, you could attach a HTML version. But maybe then, the recipients don't want and/or don't need that extra data.
So rather stay plain text and include a line saying that if the table looks broken, then the human reader should either adjust their e-mail client and change the font, or they could copy or save the mail and display it in another program where they know how to change the font.
Just interested: what e-mail client do they actually use? | [reply] |
Howdy!
E-mail is, fundamentally, a text-only application. Non-plain-text data can be sent via that channel by
encoding it into a text representation. Plain text has no
concept of "font", "color", or "size".
I think you are asking the wrong question, or making
incorrect associations.
When I send an e-mail message, I have no control, nor any
reasonable expectation of influence over the specific
type face, size, or color that the message will apepar in
on the recipient's screen. If it is important to specify
those parameters as a part of the content you are sending,
you have to use a non-plain-text part in a multipart MIME
message.
If you are constructing a text/plain part, you may presume
that the recipient will view it in a fixed font. If they
choose to use a proportional font, the table will be all
messed up, but they should be able to deal with that. If
their e-mail program won't let them control the font and
inflicts a proportional font on them, they need to get a
non-broken reader.
So, to get to your question: Not that I know of. Just
format the text with blanks on the assumption that it will
be viewed in a fixed font.
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