How to set wrap for textmode

[Ingo Klöcker]

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On Sunday, 6. May 2001 17:02, Johan Wevers wrote:
> Not using hard returns causes messages to look formatted like
>
> XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
> XXX
> XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
> XXXX
> XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
> XXX
> XXXXXXXX
>
> when I receive them on my Linux machine.

Normally this is caused by messages where hard returns are used to wrap 
the lines for example at column 70 but then the receiver looks at it 
with a maximal width of for example 64 columns. If it would have been 
transmitted in one long line everything would be perfect. That's one of 
the few advantages of HTML messages. They look always good regardless 
of the use of hard returns or no returns at all.
Using hard returns to wrap the lines manually or automatically will 
always cause the message to look like above for some people (who use a 
small maximal width for the mail reader).

> >But how does he do that if the formatting of the message doesn't
> > take place until after he's hit the Send button?
>
> Use hard returns within the windows mailer. I don't see the problem
> here. Except for people who don't use a fixed-width font for mail
> perhaps, but that's a bad habbit anyway.

That's bullshit. Non-fixed-width fonts are much more legible. Or why 
else are almost all book nowadays printed with proportional fonts 
instead of fixed-width fonts? Additionally, in general the overall 
appearance of a mail is as good as with a fixed-width font. Only some 
signatures sometimes look a bit weird (especially those ascii images).

BTW, although I use a proportional font I have no problem with hard 
returns because my MUA takes care of this.

> > Perhaps this kind of thing doesn't take place in Unix style Mail
> > Clients. <shrug>
>
> Maybe it does in Netscape for unix, but I've never testet that. Mutt
> and elm don't mess with the formatting of the message that the editor
> delivers to them.

The problem is not that Netscape wraps the long lines to make them 
better legible (which is IMHO a very nice thing because it avoids the 
need to scroll the mail sideways to read some long lines which were 
sent by some stupid MUAs). The problem is that Netscape (at least < 6) 
has no PGP/GnuPG integration. In order to check a signed mail you have 
to either copy and paste it to some other GnuPG frontend which then 
verifies the signature or you have to save the message and then verify 
the signature manually. The latter should be O.K. but the first will 
lead to wrong signatures if the message has been wrapped by Netscape. 
IIRC one can turn off this automatic wrapping of long lines.

Regards,
Ingo
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