And why doesn't this Mozilla input system respect my keystrokes? When I use the RETURN key I expect a NEW LINE so my intended formatting displays properly. Those > symbols above are both at the start of new lines.

You probably need to use leading spaces to force it to display verbatim.

>like
>this

But that may not work in the title or in quote blocks. Also, bear in mind that this forum knows how to parse html markup so may just try to treat it as part of a tag. I often use &lt; to generate a < character, and there I had to use &amp; to generate the &.

I think one of Kaosmos's addons will be useful to you; ChangeQuote or QuoteAndComposeManager.

https://freeshell.de/~kaosmos/changequote-en.html https://freeshell.de/~kaosmos/quoteandcomposemanager-en.html

I don't speak HTML.

Neither of those addons has a feature that says "instead of denoting quotes with vertical blue bars, put a ">" symbol at the start of each line of quoted material. Add another > for each nested layer of quoted material."

I think it is time for you to take a break. It is not the job of a volunteer to interpret your ignorance so you go away satisfied. If you don't speak the language put up with the defaults. If you want to change the defaults, learn the language necessary to do so.

Sounds to me you just want to compose in P{lain text as that uses > HTML uses the | These have been defacto standards for 10 or 20 years now. Hold the shift key when you hit reply.