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OT Re: wrap long lines?



On Tue, Oct 14, 2003 at 09:49:42AM +0200, Hugues wrote:
> 
> Ce cher Gerhard Siegesmund <gerhard.siegesmund@xxxxxxxx> a dit :
> 
> >> Is there anyway to get mutt to wrap the long lines that some ill
> >> behaved mail clients produce?
> >
> > Take a look at smart_wrap and wrapmargin. This should help. Also take a
> 
> from manual.txt : 
> 
> --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
>   6.3.263.  wrapmargin
> 
>   Type: number
>   Default: 0
> 
>   Controls the size of the margin remaining at the right side of the
>   terminal when mutt's pager does smart wrapping.
> --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---
> 
> well... 
> WHY does  it wraps  from the _right_  margin, not  the _left_ one  ? I
> think this a stupid behaviour !

Just think one more time about it and you shall find that this is the
smartest behaviour ;) 

> 
> When I want wrapping, For sure  I want wrapped lines to do $wrapmargin
> chars _maximum_, not 'right spaces' to do exactly $wrapmargin chars...

Let's look at benefits that mutt offers with wrapmargin.
If you can change the size of your terminal window (I can)
then the length of lines will automatically adjust to the size of your
window. So if you reduce the width then the lines still would be wrapped
at the right side of window. At the same time if it was done the way you
proposed it then the lines would not wrap correctly. So mutt has perfect
behaviour and you suggest strange things :)

Still very often the wrapmargin can't save the situation. It works best
only with emails that follow the rule "one paragraph is one line". If
the writer of email just has slightly longer lines (say 90 instead of
68) then his email will look ragged. The only way to redeem this
situation is to reformat his email. There are few programs that do this.
I believe some of them were mentioned on this list. Just search the
archives. When you find such a program then you configure your procmail
(you have that, right? :) to call the program before the message is
stored into your mailbox.

Andrei