Re: Wrapping long lines (Was Re: FAQ update suggestion for "I'm having basic problems with find. Why?")

[Eduardo Chappa <chappa at math dot washington dot edu>]

*** Christopher Faylor (ufocgf-no-personal-reply-please@cygwin.com.tv)...:

:) On Fri, Jul 09, 2004 at 09:18:30AM -0700, Eduardo Chappa wrote:
:) >*** Christopher Faylor 
:) >(ufocgf-no-personal-reply-please@cygwin.com.tv)...:
:) >
:) >:) On Fri, Jul 09, 2004 at 11:27:55AM +0100, William Blunn wrote:
:) >:) >I have set up several web-based systems which do this, and it 
:) >:) >wasn't hard.
:) >:)
:) >:) >On Thu, Jul 08, 2004 at 06:26:27PM -0400, Christopher Faylor 
:) >:) >wrote:
:) >:) >>Finally, you (Igor) are right that we are not going to change the 
:) >:) >>sourceware.org software to wrap in any other fashion than it does 
:) >:) >>now.
:) >:)
:) >:) sourceware.org, the home of cygwin.com, is a technical site.  The 
:) >:) mailing lists that it sponsors are for technical discussions.
:) >:)
:) >:) In these discussions, the formatting of messages could conceivably 
:) >:) actually *mean something*.  It's entirely possible that someone 
:) >:) meant to use 997 characters in one of the lines of their message to 
:) >:) illustrate a point or even to provide a patch.
:) >
:) >If someone sends a 997 characters line, I will see it wrapped in my 
:) >e-mail program, 12 times wrapped. It will not be cut at the width of 
:) >the screen. That's very helpful in my opinion.
:) 
:) Maybe you're being purposely obtuse.  I don't know.  My point was that 
:) if I send specially formatted text in my messages to a technical 
:) mailing list I don't want the archiving software to unformat it for me.  
:) What it does to the email reader on your PDA is irrelevant.

What you do not understand is that i am talking about a PDA as a screen, 
like the one that you are reading your e-mail message.

Since you wondered, I am not purposely obstuse, I am stating my opinion. 
We just happen to disagree on this point.

:) >If someone provides a patch and I were to cut and paste that patch, I 
:) >would call myself crazy, I would normally save the patch to a file 
:) >directly, so this is not an issue.
:) 
:) The issue is inspecting the patch in the archives.  If you have to 
:) puzzle out where the line breaks actually occur because your web 
:) browser is helpfully wrapping things for you, then the utility of the 
:) archives has been diminished for some people (like me).

I understand, I see how this could be an issue. But adding <BR>, as I 
mentioned before fixes this problem.

:) >On the other hand, just to mention something, instead of saying "NO, 
:) >it won't happen", maybe you may want to experiment on adding <BR> at 
:) >the end of each line, or adding <P> instead of having empty lines, or 
:) >things like that. Probably does not work out of the box, but it 
:) >probably can be tuned to fit most messages, if not all.
:) 
:) That's sort of presumptuous, don't you think?

No.

:)  You don't even know how the archives are generated but you have no 
:) qualms about suggesting that I take my time trying to "fix" something 
:) which I've already indicated is not broken.

I do not need to know how the archives are generated to see that they are 
broken, but if you want to spare your time explaining this to me, I am 
happy to read it.

I never used the word "fix", please do not misunderstand me. I refer to 
this as "enhance". Yes, it is broken, by the way.

:)  Again, I am not going to spend any time trying to set up the cygwin 
:) mailing list as a special case.  There are surely other sites archiving 
:) the mailing list out there somewhere.  Use one of them if the 
:) formatting in the sourceware.org archive offends you.

It has not offended me. Did I say so?

:) OTOH, if anyone wants to change the policy of sourceware.org, you are 
:) welcome to send email to the overseers mailing list and lobby for 
:) change.  I don't think you are going to find a receptive audience, but 
:) I could be wrong.

I don't think it's the time to send such request. I will wait a couple of 
years to do so.

-- 
Eduardo
http://www.math.washington.edu/~chappa/pine/

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