Subject: How do I stop Pine from justifing ASCII uploads?

From: [email-masked] (DANIEL PRINCE)
Date: 2 Jul 1995 03:03:50 GMT

I like to compose some messages ofline and then do an ASCII upload of 
them.  When I do this in Pine (and Pico) it justifies all my paragraphs 
together.  Is there any way I can stop it from doing this?  It takes a 
lot of time to go in and separate my paragraphs and it shouldn't be 
necessary.

Also is there a way to tell Pine that the delete key is not the same as 
the backspace key.  In all my other programs the delete key deletes the 
character under the cursor.  In Pine (and Pico) it does the same thing as 
the backspace key and I keep deleting the wrong character.

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From: Chip Old <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 2 Jul 1995 21:31:29 -0400 (EDT)

> lot of time to go in and separate my paragraphs and it shouldn't be 
 
It would help to know what platform Pine is running on (UNIX? DOS?) and
how you're accessing it (dial-up?), but I'll guess it's on a UNIX box and
you're accessing it by dialing into a shell account. 
 
I do ASCII uploads into Pine fairly often and don't have that problem.  
I suspect it is your telecomm software, not Pine, that is to blame.  Some 
telecomm software ignores lines containing only a CR during an ASCII 
dump.  In some telecomm software this is configurable, so check that 
first.
 
If that doesn't work, the trick is to make your "blank" lines actually
non-blank.  Put a space character or two on each blank line.  This will
still appear to be a blank line to the reader, but your computer will
treat it as a non-blank line.  Most telecomm software will send such
lines unmodified.  If that doesn't work, then put an unobtrusive character
(like a period) on each "blank" line. 
  
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Francis E. Old (Chip Old)         Internet: [email-masked]
Internetworking Administrator     Voice:    (410) 887-6180
Baltimore County Public Library   FAX:      (410) 887-2091
320 York Road
Towson, Maryland 21204 USA

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From: [email-masked] (Henry McDaniel)
Date: 6 Jul 1995 07:33:54 GMT

>the backspace key and I keep deleting the wrong character.

Hmm not sure.  But I would almost bet you that if you use SHIFT-backspace
it will delete.

As to the justify problem:

This may not work depending on your setup.. but if we're talking
about UNIX, Upload your file to your directory (outside of pine)

Startup pine, When in the header's area hit ctrl-r, go to
the attachment's field.  Enter the filename and path you uploaded.
Bingo.

-McDaniel

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From: [email-masked] (DANIEL PRINCE)
Date: 5 Jul 1995 19:24:49 GMT

Chip Old ([email-masked]) wrote:
: On 2 Jul 1995, DANIEL PRINCE wrote:

: > I like to compose some messages ofline and then do an ASCII upload of 
: > them.  When I do this in Pine (and Pico) it justifies all my paragraphs 
: > together.  Is there any way I can stop it from doing this?  It takes a 
: > lot of time to go in and separate my paragraphs and it shouldn't be 
: > necessary.
:  
: It would help to know what platform Pine is running on (UNIX? DOS?) and
: how you're accessing it (dial-up?), but I'll guess it's on a UNIX box and
: you're accessing it by dialing into a shell account. 
:  
: I do ASCII uploads into Pine fairly often and don't have that problem.  
: I suspect it is your telecomm software, not Pine, that is to blame.  Some 
: telecomm software ignores lines containing only a CR during an ASCII 
: dump.  In some telecomm software this is configurable, so check that 
: first.
:  
: If that doesn't work, the trick is to make your "blank" lines actually
: non-blank.  Put a space character or two on each blank line.  This will
: still appear to be a blank line to the reader, but your computer will
: treat it as a non-blank line.  Most telecomm software will send such
: lines unmodified.  If that doesn't work, then put an unobtrusive character
: (like a period) on each "blank" line. 

I use Telix to call a BBS that has Pine on a Unix box.  I have Telix 
configured to expand blank lines (it adds a space).  I have also tried it 
without expanding blank lines with the same results.  I have even tried 
using THREE blank lines between each paragraph but it still justified 
them all together.  The next thing I will try is changing the blank lines 
to 65 spaces.

:   
: --------------------------------------------------------------------
: Francis E. Old (Chip Old)         Internet: [email-masked]
: Internetworking Administrator     Voice:    (410) 887-6180
: Baltimore County Public Library   FAX:      (410) 887-2091
: 320 York Road
: Towson, Maryland 21204 USA

---

From: [email-masked] (Jim LeBay)
Date: 7 Jul 1995 02:08:05 GMT

> lot of time to go in and separate my paragraphs and it shouldn't be 

Pine does the same thing to me, in a most impresive way.  

I usually run Pine 3.91 in a Terminal window on my NeXTstation, running
NextStep 3.1.  If I copy & paste text into the window running Pine (or
Pico), the pasted text is automatically justified into a single large
paragraph, regardless of any blank lines. 

The wierdest part happens if any following paragraphs are "too close". 
The pasted text "gobbles up" the existing text, and lines of each get
mixed together, and then the whole thing gets justified.  What a mess! 

This doesn't make any sense to me.  Pasting text into a window should have
the exact same results as typing it in, right? 

I've also found another way to reproduce this bug, for those of you who
aren't lucky enough to use NextStep.  Use any(?) IBM-PC vt100 terminal
emulation program, login to your UNIX box, run Pine or Pico, and do an
ASCII upload of a UNIX-format text file.  I.e. text lines separated only
by a single line-feed (0x0a), rather than DOS's normal CR-LF. 

------
Jim LeBay                           (517) 353-1800 x143   353-5364 (FAX)
Computing Information Center        [email-masked]
Michigan State University           [email-masked] (NeXTmail)
     ----------
     When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President.
     Now I'm beginning to believe it.     -- Clarence Darrow

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From: Phil Tompkins <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 8 Jul 1995 19:52:46 -0400

> lot of time to go in and separate my paragraphs and it shouldn't be 

It's your communications software that's doing this to you.  I have had 
the problem with Telix, but not with Hayes SmartCom.

Phil

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From: Moshe Segal <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Jul 1995 19:22:57 -0400

With my Unix account, rather than use an ASCII upload, which can 
sometimes be unpredictable, I usually upload my file to the account, 
then, once I am in the composer, use the <R> command to read the file 
into the message.  Of course, there may still be a problem if the message 
was written in DOS, so a conversion utility might be needed.

You're not the only one who's made mistakes    Moshe E. SEgal
But they're the only things   1336 Cory Drive
That you can truly call your own   Dayton, Oh 45406

Some people hope for a miracle cure,   [email-masked] 
Some people just accept the world as it is.   (513) 279-0438

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From: [email-masked] (DANIEL PRINCE)
Date: 10 Jul 1995 19:34:08 GMT

Jim LeBay ([email-masked]) wrote:

: I've also found another way to reproduce this bug, for those of you who
: aren't lucky enough to use NextStep.  Use any(?) IBM-PC vt100 terminal
: emulation program, login to your UNIX box, run Pine or Pico, and do an
: ASCII upload of a UNIX-format text file.  I.e. text lines separated only
: by a single line-feed (0x0a), rather than DOS's normal CR-LF. 

I discovered that it is the line feeds that are the problem.  Pico uses 
control "J" for justify and control "J" is (0x0a) the same as a line 
feed.  If you don't want Pico to justify what you upload you have to not 
send any line feeds.