Subject: should mail be wrapped at a column?

From: Gaurang Khetan <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2002 04:42:39 -0800

Hi,

Having moved to pine for my university mail from using Yahoo and Hotmail
all my life, I found a strange thing.

Pine wraps the lines at a particular column number. The column number
can be changed but the feature cannot be removed (i guess). 

Frustrated by this initially, I used to invoke an alternative editor
(emacs) to type in any mail (emacs does not force wrapping).

But now I just use the default wrapping. 

But I am still confused as to what is the "right way" to send a mail (if
there is)?

Web-based Mail systems (yahoo, hotmail etc) and Outlook (i think) are
designed for non-wrapped mails, while pine, evolution use the wrapped
ones.

Do advise.

-Gaurang.

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From: Eduardo Chappa <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2002 07:26:21 -0800 (PST)

*** Gaurang Khetan ([email-masked]) wrote in the pine-info list today:

:) Pine wraps the lines at a particular column number. The column number
:) can be changed but the feature cannot be removed (i guess).
:)
:) Frustrated by this initially, I used to invoke an alternative editor
:) (emacs) to type in any mail (emacs does not force wrapping).
:)
:) But now I just use the default wrapping.
:)
:) But I am still confused as to what is the "right way" to send a mail
:) (if there is)?

The short answer is that there is no right way to send the message, except
by the fact that lines should not be longer than 1000 characters.

There are two formats to send the message: flowed and fixed. You have seen
flowed all your life, now you are seeing fixed. In flowed format,
paragraphs end with a CRLF terminator, while in fixed format all lines of
the paragraph end with a CRLF.

It's obvious that there is a stiking contrast between them. I don't know
if you are aware of this, but the default editor of Pine, has a command
"^J", which can be used to reformat paragraphs. There was a great
improvement in Pine4.50 for this command (unfortunately appears only as a
bug fix in the release notes :(), but now it should work very well, so you
may want to give it a try.

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

---

From: Alessandro Selli <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2002 16:32:41 +0100 (CET)

Il giorno Thu, 21 Nov 2002, Gaurang Khetan così ha scritto:

|From: Gaurang Khetan <[email-masked]>
|To: Pine Discussion Forum <[email-masked]>
|Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2002 04:42:39 -0800
|Subject: should mail be wrapped at a column?
|
|Hi,
|
|Having moved to pine for my university mail from using Yahoo and Hotmail
|all my life, I found a strange thing.
|
|Pine wraps the lines at a particular column number. The column number
|can be changed but the feature cannot be removed (i guess).
|
|Frustrated by this initially, I used to invoke an alternative editor
|(emacs) to type in any mail (emacs does not force wrapping).
|
|But now I just use the default wrapping.
|
|But I am still confused as to what is the "right way" to send a mail (if
|there is)?
|
|Web-based Mail systems (yahoo, hotmail etc) and Outlook (i think) are
|designed for non-wrapped mails, while pine, evolution use the wrapped
|ones.
|

  From: $SOURCE_PATH/pine4.50/doc/tech-notes/config.html

composer-wrap-column
          This option specifies an aspect of Pine's Composer. This gives the
          maximum width that auto-wrapped lines will have. It's also the
          maximum width of lines justified using the ^J Justify command. The
          normal default is 74. The largest allowed setting is normally 80 in
          order to prevent very long lines from being sent in outgoing mail.
          When the mail is actually sent, trailing spaces will be stripped off
          of each line.

"normally" I guess means that it is a value set at compilation time.
Limiting the number of columns in a email message is mostly a matter of
netiquette.  However, pico, pine's default editor, does accept the -w switch
that, according to the man page, does the following:

      -w     Disable word wrap (thus allow editing of long lines).

  I don't know how to pass it to pico from within pine, though.  You may have
to put a script in the PATH named "pico" that has Pine load that script
instead of the real pico, and that script will take care of running pico with
the -w switch followed by any and all the parameters pine passed the script.

  Sandro

-- 
Bellum se ipsum alet
       La guerra nutre se stessa

Livio, Ab urbe condita, XXXIV,9

---

From: Eduardo Chappa <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2002 07:41:21 -0800 (PST)

*** Alessandro Selli ([email-masked]) wrote in the pine-info list today:

:) "normally" I guess means that it is a value set at compilation time.
:) Limiting the number of columns in a email message is mostly a matter of
:) netiquette.  However, pico, pine's default editor, does accept the -w
:) switch that, according to the man page, does the following:
:)
:)       -w Disable word wrap (thus allow editing of long lines).
:)
:)   I don't know how to pass it to pico from within pine, though.

The drawback of this method is that you can not justify keeping the quote
string (it will justify as if there was no quote string). I have a patch
in my web page to add this support, though.