Ta-Da ! You solved it. Thank you very much.

Wow, how many secret rosetta stones are there in Pegasus ? Some of this reminds me of trying to figure out the path inside the pyramids.

Whatever, it now works, and I can read it. Thank you a bunch.

I want to send E-mail in plain ordinary ascii text, without any choice of font, size, bold, italic, whatever; just the 127 ascii chars, or possibly 95 characters, if you want to get hyper specific, whatever; i.e., the blank space char (" ") thru the tilde char ("~").

I've searched the forums for the word "font" and the phrase "Turn Off Rich Text" and have found nothing.

Is there an extant thread here showing how to compose a message in plain ascii text ?

I've tried un-checking the "rich text" box, but I still get a font in the composition area which is too small.

I also know that using a larger font (which is 500x easier on my own eyes) greatly annoys 99% of the population.

I want to use plain ascii text so that...

1. I can read, write, and compose messages in a font that is comfortable for me, and
2. The recipient can read the exact same text in a font that is comfortable for him.

Again, clueless newbee here. All suggestions welcomed as always.

[quote user="A01"]

1. I can read, write, and compose messages in a font that is comfortable for me

[/quote]

For reading messages: Open a message and choose a font/size from menu option Reader > Font.... Your choice will be applied to the open message and future messages.

For writing messages: Start a new message and choose a font/size from menu option Message > Font.... Your choice will be applied next time you start a new message.

Keep 'rich text' unselected in the editor.

At first I thought that the first item of advice plain and simply does not work. When viewing the message in the "Message" tab of the message viewer, the choice of font appears to be (apparently, I'm totally guessing) whatever the sender chose. If I flip over to the "Attachments" tab, I get a choice of "Plain Text" (which sort-of works, the lines are way too long and apparently don't wrap) and "HTML Text" which has a good fixed-width font, bold, which I can almost read, except that it is a little bit too small. This text does wrap.

Interestingly enough, further investigation indicates that when the sender just responds with ascii text (as I want to do) then the advice works perfectly; i.e., when the E-mail does not come in "Attachments" then I get a comfortable font.

The second item of advice basically works. The "Bold" attribute doesn't hold (didn't try italic) but that's okay (I said no choice of bold/italic, so, I'll have to stand by that.) Great. works fine.

At this instant, my host has some problem that I don't understand, so my tests aren't coming back to me rapidly. I'll keep testing any suggestions and ideas you or anyone here may want to offer

At first I thought that the first item of advice plain and simply does

not work. When viewing the message in the "Message" tab of the message

viewer, the choice of font appears to be (apparently, I'm totally

guessing) whatever the sender chose. If I flip over to the

"Attachments" tab, I get a choice of "Plain Text" (which sort-of works,

the lines are way too long and apparently don't wrap) and "HTML Text"

which has a good fixed-width font, bold, which I can almost read,

except that it is a little bit too small. This text does wrap.

This was one of those multipart/alternative messages with both a plain text and HTML part.  If you select to NOT view the HTML by default then you should be able to read the plain text.  To wrap hit the F5 or CTRL+F5.  As you found out you cannot set the font when viewing an HTML message. 

Tools | Options | Message reader

Where a choice exists, display the fancy version  A lot of mail sent using formatting also includes a version of the message in plain text format. The plain text format can usually be displayed with complete reliability, where the rich text version may in some cases be unpleasantly formatted, especially when it contains HTML data. Checking this control tells Pegasus Mail to present the formatted version of the message, while leaving it unchecked tells it to display the plain text version in preference. In situations where only a fancy version of a message is available, Pegasus Mail will display it even if this control is unchecked.
 

At this instant, my host has some problem that I don't understand, so

my tests aren't coming back to me rapidly. I'll keep testing any

suggestions and ideas you or anyone here may want to offer

You and a lot of others it appears.  I've been having Internet problems the last two days.  It's not my DSL line since that's solid as a rock and I can reach some places like Google and Yahoo immediately.