[PLUG-TALK] Re: [PLUG] upgrading disk without reinstalling anything

[Jeme A Brelin]

On Mon, 29 Mar 2004, Russ Johnson wrote:
> Paul Johnson wrote:
> >Please turn your line wraps on to about 72 columns.
>
> Why anyone uses a MUA that doesn't support rewrapping of email is beyond
> me.

I don't think you understand the problem.  Rewrapping only works if the
sending MUA doesn't include any linefeeds of its own.

Very long lines within a paragraph are just fine.  Most everyone's MUA is
going to wrap the long lines on reading.  But linefeeds WITHIN a paragraph
(say, every 85 characters) are going to cause lines to wrap oddly in the
reader's MUA.

> I don't understand why anyone would use a broken MUA that can't re-wrap
> an incoming message to fit the current screen width.

You don't WANT an MUA that strips linefeeds from incoming mail.  Those
linefeeds could be important for the formatting.

Assuming your MUA is wrapping at 80 cols, then you would end up with
output
from your MUA that looks like this.  It's not only a little bit harder to
read, but
it also takes up more screen real estate and requires more scrolling to
get from
top to bottom of the post.  It's kind of a pain the ass.  This example is
short, but
hopefully you get the drift.

What you suggest is that the reader's MUA strip linefeeds within a
paragraph and insert new ones at 80 cols.  It doesn't take much
imagination to see what that would do to purposely formatted text
(concrete poetry, charts, ascii art diagrams, etc.).

> Sometimes, I'm using an 80 column terminal. Sometimes, I'm using a GUI
> MUA, and sometimes, I use a terminal that's 132 columns or wider. In all
> cases, there are excellent MUAs that will re-wrap the inbound mail to my
> screen.

Your MUAs strip linefeeds from incoming mail?

> It could all be on one line, and my MUA does just fine.

That's not the problem at all!  If it's all on one line, pretty much
everyone's MUA will try to intelligently parse the line and display it on
separate lines (often with some indicator that the line has wrapped).

The problem arises when the sender's MUA parses outgoing mail into
unusually short or long lines and inserts linefeeds to break them up.

> Trying to force the emailing masses to set a margin is like pissing into
> the wind. You end up all wet. I have more important things to worry
> about, and the format of my email on your screen is of little concern.
> This is a choice YOU make when you read email.

Uh, no.

> Knowing that folks don't put margins in their emails, and using an MUA
> that doesn't handle it gracefully is like moving in next to PDX and then
> complaining about the noise. Did you NOT know there was an airport
> there?

Nobody's complaining about people that put NO margins in their emails...
they're complaining about people who put unusually small or large margins
in their emails.

J.
-- 
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     Jeme A Brelin
    jeme at brelin.net
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