Re: [Mutt] #2917: format/flowed messages are not properly filled
#2917: format/flowed messages are not properly filled
Comment (by John Hawkinson):
{{{
Rocco Rutte <fleas@xxxxxxxx> wrote on Thu, 21 Jun 2007
at 15:01:21 -0000 in <046.765e9bc5d83e60986ba2007a91262198@xxxxxxxx>:
> By default, if you don't set $wrap, the limit is 77.
Whoa. That's weird. Can we update the docs? They say the default
is "0" and they don't say what that means, but the implication is
that the its the same as a negative value of zero:
When set to a negative value, mutt will wrap text so that there are
$wrap characters of empty space on the right side of the terminal.
Unforatunately, it seems like one of the ways to solve my problem
would be for me to set wrap=80. I'd really like to set wrap=-0 ("negative
zero"), but that doesn't seem supported.
> The point is that when you explicitly set wrap to something other than
> 0, you ask mutt to display text not wider than your limit. I'm afraid
Right. Normally I don't set wrap and would prefer not to.
> I don't see the point of composing a paragraph of text as fixed lines
in a
> format=flowed mail while hoping and requesting everything to render
well
> on the receiver's side.
Well, one answer is that sometimes users type things where the
spacing matters, and sometimes they do not. It's reasonable for
a mail client to try to apply a heuristic and format the
special lines as "fixed" and the others as "flowed".
> What if you were viewing the message on a device with less than
> 80 columns?
Then you as the receiver have a special problem and will need to take
special action.. But that vast majority of people have >=80 cols
and their viewing shouldn't be broken.
> Anyway, I'm kind of stuck on providing proposals on how to fix it,
> i.e. provide better defaults that fit most people...
It seems to me that it comes back to the 77 issue...many mail clients
will format for 80 columns, and if you wrap everything between 77 and 80,
you're going to have problems. This is independent of format=flowed.
> Comment (by brendan):
>
> $wrap defaulting to 77 columns was because the majority opinion on
mutt-
> dev IIRC was that by default mutt should use narrow columns for
> readability reasons. I think this was one of the reasons it tooks so
long
> for the new flowed handler to be applied. I think it had to default to
0
> because otherwise on small screens the wrong thing would be done? I
can't
> remember precisely why, but it could be dug up out of the mutt-dev
archive
> I suppose.
Now I'm even more confused. Is this about composition rather than
reading? It seems clear that taking 80-column-formatted text and
wrapping those lines that exceed 77 columns will produce ugly-looking
text a lot of the time. Surely that's not the intent?
Kyle Wheeler responded to mutt-dev (found in the archive) and
it didn't make it into trac, but I wanted to note that
RFC2646 is obsoleted by RFC3676 (I don't think anything
of relevance changes).
I'm not having too much like searching in the mutt-dev archives
(are they available in mbox format somewhere?), so I'll pause for
now.
--jhawk
}}}
--
Ticket URL: <http://dev.mutt.org/trac/ticket/2917#comment:>