This is the mail archive of the
cygwin
mailing list for the Cygwin project.
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".
--
RAM disk is *not* an installation procedure.
--
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/