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


Brian Dessent wrote:

My main problem with it is that it breaks quoting. When I reply to a message with no line breaks, my mail program has to either A) pick an arbitrary margin and reflow the entire message to that margin, adding ">" to the first column of each line, or B) Insert a ">" at the beginning of the paragraph and just let the long line dangle. To the person reading it will not appear correctly quoted (depending on screen width) because only the first line will have a ">" prepended. If you have color highlighting enabled then this is even more apparent. Option (A) is leads to the conclusion that having the original message with line breaks inserted is the best way to go if you expect it to be quoted as part of a discussion, since that's the format it's going to end up in for every message in the thread except the original post. Option (B) just results in broken quoting, and therefore should be avoided.

A long time ago I used emacs and it had a mode called gin-mode which stood for "Guess INdentation" mode. When faced with a bunch or levels of quoting one could use the fill-paragraph and it would fill the paragraph wrapping it correctly and properly handling the level of ">" for quoting. As I said this was a long time ago. I wonder why current software is still having a problem with this...


It's valid in that I can view messages with long lines just fine, I just don't like them -- because I'm used to <80 column margins, they read better on my screen, and I believe that email works better that way.

If the format is flowing and the HTML email you get is > 80 columns, couldn't you just size your window appropriately?!? In fact one might argue if you only want 80 characters of display for the message then sizing the window such that more than 80 characters of displayable space is, err, well a waste of screen real estate!


This is not a technical statement but rather an opinion. Likewise I CAN view HTML emails but I hate receiving them because they come festered with all sorts of colors and fonts.

As a person who regularly uses HTML style email and posting (much to many peoples chargrin and complaints) I rarely "fester" them with "all" sorts of colors and fonts. Other HTML emails and posts I receive are also rarely "festered" with all sorts of colors and fonts. Why? Because doing so takes time, knowledge and effort and most people simply don't take the time, have the knowledge nor can be bothered with the effort required. As such I don't think such an argument holds much water. IOW I think if people of your opinion see just one bolding they'll call it "festered with all sorts of colors and fonts".



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