Re: Wrapping

[Niklas =?UTF-8?Q?H=C3=B6glund=F6glund?= <su99-nho nada kth se>]

At 2003.06.23 15:21, Peter Bloomfield wrote:
> On 06/23/2003, Niklas Höglund wrote:
> [ snip ]
>> (The ugly wrapping above is done by Balsa.  I think it should be 
>> fixed to either do correct wrapping or not wrap quoted text.)
> 
> Balsa wraps moderately well when the quoted message is format=flowed 
> (like yours) and the sender composed continuous paragraphs (like 
> yours, quoted above, and properly wrapped). If the sender uses 
> format=fixed or makes `hard' line endings by hitting `Enter', or 
> quotes earlier messages that were prepared that way, Balsa respects 
> those line endings, and just breaks lines without reflowing them.

I didn't know about the format=flowed format until now.  Really nice.  
It'd do wonders for my PDA.  Have you developers thought about 
reflowing messages when viewing them too?

> An explicit option to `fix broken wrapping' would be nice. It might:
>  - take the selected portion of a message;
>  - back up to the start of the first line in the selection, and 
> figure out how deep is the quoting (a moderately liberal way might be 
> to skip over spaces and '>'s, counting the latter);
>  - reflow the selection into a single paragraph, by cutting out line 
> endings and any subsequent spaces and '>'s.
> That's pretty much what I do by hand, when I really want a message to 
> look decent.  But anything that tries to do this automatically is 
> likely to mangle text that shouldn't be treated as paragraphs (such 
> as code).

It should probably also make sure lines with different quoting depth 
are not considered one paragraph.

An easier/additional solution would be to not reflow quoted text.  The 
reason 72 characters per line are usually used is to allow a couple of 
quote marks without requiring reflowing the text.  This could be used 
to not reflow quoted text unless it's wider than 80 characters, or not 
at all, whichever is best.  (Not at all is definitely best for code.)

--
                                                Niklas

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