[MlMt] Plain text line wrapping

[Bill Cole]

On 2024-06-26 at 05:23:12 UTC-0400 (Wed, 26 Jun 2024 11:23:12 +0200)
Eelco Chaudron <mailmate at lists.freron.com>
is rumored to have said:

> Yes, but that is the behavior I do not want. I want mm to auto wrap 
> when typing. This is useful when replying to patches we’re auto 
> formatting might be messing stuff up.

MM (and anything that supports format=flowed properly) respects explicit 
line breaks and does not re-wrap text with fixed line breaks such as 
code patches when composing replies. It also will NOT "auto-wrap" by 
forcibly inserting  line breaks to enforce a maximum line length, as 
that would harm intentional formatting for text such as code.

Note that some MUAs do not respect explicit line breaks and may delete 
them to reflow text, notably MS Outlook. Some MUAs also do not 
understand how to present "format=flowed" plaintext, leaving sections 
that should be soft-wrapped by the MUA to run right off the edge of a 
window.

> So it’s more an editor/composer feature what I need.

Can you provide a concrete example of MM doing something wrong and 
explaining what you want it to do instead? I ask this because I suspect 
that the problem is fundamentally an interoperability problem based in 
other clients mishandling display of format=flowed and mangling quoted 
text sections in replies. I have found that no form of adaptation is 
possible to make all of Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail, and MM handle "plain 
text" interoperably for conversations about code.

One possible workaround for you, if Benny doesn't feel like adding a 
'hard wrap' option, is to use one of the editors that is supported by 
the Bundle mechanism and exposed in the Commands menu. The available 
bundles can be seen in the Preferences.


> //Eelco
>
> Send from my phone
>
>> Op 25 jun 2024 om 16:49 heeft Randall Gellens 
>> <mailmate at randy.pensive.org> het volgende geschreven:
>>
>> On 25 Jun 2024, at 6:17, Eelco Chaudron wrote:
>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> Is there a configuration option to auto-wrap lines (to let’s say 
>>> 79 chars) when sending plain text emails?
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>>
>>> Eelco
>>
>> Plain text mail should be created adhering to format=flowed (RFC 
>> 3676), which allows each displaying client to wrap lines for the 
>> window size (reflowing as the window size changes).
>>
>> Format=flowed sends each paragraph with lines no longer than 80 
>> characters, but because of the format=flowed marking on the MIME 
>> type, each displaying client knows it can remove the CRLF within a 
>> paragraph and reflow as appropriate. Lines that are fixed width are 
>> marked so displaying clients know not to reflow them. It also marks 
>> quote levels.
>>
>> --Randall
>>

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-- 
Bill Cole
bill at scconsult.com or billcole at apache.org
(AKA @grumpybozo at toad.social and many *@billmail.scconsult.com 
addresses)
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