Selected message font does not stick

I assume you mean r5757. Could you tro to see if it works in MailMate_r5792.tbz

I am not sure. (I uninstalled the "test" version and installed the "normal" release.) I downloaded the installer on April 4 from the link on the download page. Would that be r5792? If you have since posted a later release, can I install that over r5673? Or should I first uninstall r5673?

The font issue persists on r5792. For example, I have chosen Helvetica Regular 14 as the font for message bodies. However, MailMate displays the text larger. It looks to be around 16 point. When I click on “Show Fonts” in Preferences, no font is selected in the font dialogue. I must then select the font, but nothing changes if I choose 14 as the size. I can change the size to 14 by selecting a different size first, and then clicking on 14. However, once I continue typing the message, the size jumps back to 16.

Clicking through some of the messages in my sent messages, I see that many of them appear in Times New Roman, even though they were composed with Helvetica. The font dialogue indicates they are 14 point, but they appear much smaller, closer to 11 point. The Preferences dialogue also does not maintain focus, but instead disappears behind MailMate.

As I wrote, you need r5793 for the fixes mentioned. Did you get that and the reference to r5792 was a typo?

No, I did not get r5793. I was not aware it was available for download.

Sorry, I wasn't very clear when I wrote it. Here's a direct link to the latest test release if you need it: r5794.

Font selection is even more troublesome in r5794. The font for a message body cannot be changed. Only the font for how message headers are displayed can be changed. Message bodies continue to display in either Times New Roman 11 or Helvetica Regular 16, with no apparent pattern. (In Apple Mail, these messages all display as Helvetica 14, my chosen font for rich text message bodies.) Perhaps MailMate is trying to match the sender's original message font.

Well, the new message view didn't really support overriding the styling (including) fonts used by the sender. It was a bug that it temporarily worked on the displayed message when changing the font. This is fixed and therefore it may seem like a step back, but it really was a bug.

The new message view is based on a different HTML view than the old one (which has been deprecated by Apple) and font settings work differently now. The old HTML view allowed a set of default fonts to be defined, but this now has to be “injected” into the HTML itself and I haven't looked into that yet. By default, it is important that it only affects emails with few or no explicit font settings. (You can create a new ticket if you like, but I do have this feature on my list.)

Additional note: I expect this to work more like you would expect in the next update (r5795+).

I appreciate that you are quashing bugs and updating the code to present a cleaner HTML view. It doesn't bother me to see the sender's message in whatever font and styling they chose. What bugs me is when I see that messages I've written and replies I've written in Helvetica 14 show up as Times New Roman 11 or Helvetica 16 or larger. That does not happen in the current version of Apple Mail running on macOS 11.2.3 Big Sur.

The r5795 update is available now.

The font issue appears to have been resolved with the r5795 update. Thanks!