This is the mail archive of the cygwin mailing list for the Cygwin project.


Index Nav: [Date Index] [Subject Index] [Author Index] [Thread Index]
Message Nav: [Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next]
Other format: [Raw text]

Re: Wrapping long lines (Was Re: FAQ update suggestion for "I'm having basic problems with find. Why?")


On Thu, 8 Jul 2004, Eduardo Chappa wrote:

> On Thu, 8 Jul 2004, Igor Pechtchanski wrote:
>
> :) > Any long lines coming into my mail reader are nicely wrapped
> :) > according to whatever window width I configure.
> :)
> :) They are in mine too.  But look at the web archive of your message:
> :) <http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2004-07/msg00178.html>.
>
> Igor,
>
> I happened to look at this message in Lynx and did not see anything bad
> about it, then it ocurred to me that you were referring to a GUI browser.
> This is the case when you are complaining about how it looks in your
> browser (probably most people browser), but it's not a defect of the
> message, per se (my logic is that it displays well in some browsers, bad
> in others, then the problem is not the message, but the browser).
>
> I do understand your concern, but not everyone presses return at the end
> of a line (e.g. me), and you will have a hard time making people do that
> (I've already written hundreds of messages without pressing return at the
> end of the line). My *editor* has automatic wrapping which inserts those
> CRs, and if it did not have them, you would see the same problem from me.
> Some mailers are configured to send "format=flowed" text, which would
> explain why you receive these long lines. This format is widely supported,
> and is even supported by Pine 4.60.
>
> format=flowed puts the burden on the receiving end, normally an e-mail
> program, not a web browser, so if a web browser can not cope with this
> requirement, the thing I would say is "do not use a web browser, use an
> e-mail program, you are causing your own problem".
>
> Having said all that, you are free to express your preference on how you
> prefer that messages be sent to the list, but if you find that *your*
> browser is having a problem, I would advise you to use another browser to
> read such messages, or better yet an e-mail program that can cope with
> such message. There are too many people in the world that are going to
> subscribe to this list that will not know about this and will incurr in
> this behavior, I do not think you want to police everyone in this list
> (but maybe you do).
>
> I like that you can click in "Raw Text" and see a more readable version of
> this same message. That seems to be a good compromise.

Eduardo,

We're using the same mailer. :-)  Aside from that, most mailers can be
configured to insert newlines automatically, and it's much easier to
configure the mailer than to get a GUI browser to wrap lines in
<PRE>-formatted documents.  Besides, even if you look at it in Lynx,
you'll see line breaks in weird places, e.g., in the middle of a word.  I
read it through the archives, and so am hit by this problem more than
most.  I could subscribe to the list and read it via my mail client
(pine), but I have reasons for not doing that, and, in the spirit of what
you said above, people shouldn't be forced to subscribe if alternate
mechanisms are available.

FWIW, "Raw Text" doesn't give you a readable version, it gives you a
MIME-encoded one (with Content-Type quoted-printable), which is not always
the same.

I've already explained why I don't think format=flowed is appropriate for
this list (in particular, long command lines will also be wrapped if it
ever were to be accepted).  In any case, the definitive opinion will be
that of CGF, and if he says that he doesn't care one way or another, then
my opinion will be just that -- an opinion, and not a list custom of any
sort.
	Igor
-- 
				http://cs.nyu.edu/~pechtcha/
      |\      _,,,---,,_		pechtcha@cs.nyu.edu
ZZZzz /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_		igor@watson.ibm.com
     |,4-  ) )-,_. ,\ (  `'-'		Igor Pechtchanski, Ph.D.
    '---''(_/--'  `-'\_) fL	a.k.a JaguaR-R-R-r-r-r-.-.-.  Meow!

"I have since come to realize that being between your mentor and his route
to the bathroom is a major career booster."  -- Patrick Naughton

--
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/


Index Nav: [Date Index] [Subject Index] [Author Index] [Thread Index]
Message Nav: [Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next]