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

[Andrew DeFaria]

Eduardo Chappa wrote:

> I happened to look at this message in Lynx and did not see anything 
> bad about it, then it ocurred to me that you were referring to a GUI 
> browser. This is the case when you are complaining about how it looks 
> in your browser (probably most people browser), but it's not a defect 
> of the message, per se (my logic is that it displays well in some 
> browsers, bad in others, then the problem is not the message, but the 
> browser).

It's not a problem with a browser rather it's a direct result of usage 
of the HTML <pre> tag. <pre> means just that - preformatted. Now the 
person/process that created that html file could have choose to use 
something other than <pre> and the text would wrap approriately in any 
browser.

> I do understand your concern, but not everyone presses return at the 
> end of a line (e.g. me), and you will have a hard time making people 
> do that (I've already written hundreds of messages without pressing 
> return at the end of the line).

Precisely as you should IMHO. The responder cannot tell with any degree 
of certainty what the reader will be using to read the message, whether 
that person has his reader maximized, tall and skinny or short and fat. 
It's the reading client who should be responsible for wrapping the text 
to the windows current size. As such you should not be inserting 
artifical "break the line here" returns.

> My *editor* has automatic wrapping which inserts those CRs, and if it 
> did not have them, you would see the same problem from me. Some 
> mailers are configured to send "format=flowed" text, which would 
> explain why you receive these long lines. This format is widely 
> supported, and is even supported by Pine 4.60.
>
> format=flowed puts the burden on the receiving end, 

Where is should be IMHO (see above)

> normally an e-mail program, not a web browser, so if a web browser can 
> not cope with this requirement, 

The web browser has no problem coping with this requirement - it's just 
that the web page writer purposely told the web browser not to wrap the 
text between the <pre> and </pre>.

> the thing I would say is "do not use a web browser, use an e-mail 
> program, you are causing your own problem".

I'd say "fix the web page"!

> Having said all that, you are free to express your preference on how 
> you prefer that messages be sent to the list, but if you find that 
> *your* browser is having a problem, I would advise you to use another 
> browser to read such messages,

All standards compliant web browsers should render that web page the same.

-- 
Cannot find REALITY.SYS. Universe halted.


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