On April 28, 2005 at 11:02, East Coast Coder wrote: > Many MUA's insert newlines after every 80 chars. Now, when the > message gets converted by MHonArc into HTML, these are stored as > <br>'s - hence, we have an HTML message wrapped after every 80 chars.
You are still mixing two things. The email is _not_ an HTML message: it is a plain text message. During archiving by mhonarc, the semantics of plain text is preserved, hence the <br>'s. If the email was authored as an HTML message (i.e. content-type of text/html), then mhonarc does not put in <br>'s. There is nothing in mhonarc's HTML filter code that even has the string "<br>". Therefore, you must be refering to how mhonarc converts text/plain messages, NOT text/html messages. Since you also refer to the existence of <br>'s, then you have changed the default behavior of the text/plain filter (m2h_text_plain::filter). By default, the filter uses a PRE element for rendering the textual data with _no_ <br>'s added -- since they are not needed. The true semantics of a text/plain message (excluding format=flowed types) is to render the text as-is. Since you mention <br>'s, I would guess that you have specified the "nonfixed" option to m2h_text_plain::filter. In this case, you are explicitly overriding some of the semantics of text/plain (i.e. do not user a fixed-width font to render text). However, mhonarc attempts to preserve all other semantics, like line breaks (hence the existence of <br>'s). If you want to avoid the confusing wrapping, then add the keepspace option to m2h_text_plain::filter. This way, lines will not get wrapped if the HTML window is reduced, always preserving the original line semantics of the email message. > However, HTML UA's (that is, browsers) handle line wrapping > automatically - as the user likes it. The user can squeeze the window > less than 80, in which case the br's will annoyinngly fall midline - > or he can make it much wider (for a wide screen, or to print) - except > that the br's will prevent this. _NO_ HTML browser will auto-wrap lines in a PRE element unless explicitly specified via a stylesheet. Mhonarc, by default, uses the PRE element to wrap plain text messages. Have you defined options to the m2h_text_plain::filter that changes this behavior? If so, this may be the source of your confusion. > This is one of the founding principles of HTML: encode only content > and structure, and allow the UA to handle as much of the formatting as > possible. In general, it works quite well, and I think in this case, > MHonArc would benefit. I think you are confusing various concepts. I'm well aware of how HTML works. I think you are not clear on how email works, especially the role of media-types (aka content-types) and mhonarc's preservation of the their semantics. You may want to read RFC 2646, especially section 3. --ewh
