On Mon, Sep 05, 2022 at 10:45:09PM -0400, Kurt Hackenberg <k...@panix.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 06, 2022 at 08:54:58AM +1000, Cameron Simpson wrote: > > > I'm not sure we're disagreeing here, except for the conceptual > > separation of the space-stuffing step. > > I agree that it's a separate step, or layer. I just think it might better be > done within the editor -- or special-purpose program, or script that runs > two programs -- rather than be done later by Mutt itself. That is, Mutt > could farm out the whole job, rather than have the external program do half > and Mutt do half. > > I would guess that it's split just because it was made for vim, and vim > can't do the space-stuffing. I don't know the history, though. I expect it is done in mutt because it must be done (for transport), and it would be a mistake to assume that it will be done by the editor, whatever editor it is. I don't think that mutt makes any assumptions about which editor is used. Also, vim could do it. Vim can do anything to text, and it can be automated, but of course, it needs to configured to do so. Not necessarily with formatoptions settings, but perhaps with filetype-based autocommands. But I think the real problem with format=flowed, and possibly the reason why the large corporate web-based mail providers don't support it is that it's not sufficiently trivial to make it happen. So maybe it just isn't used by enough people. It seems that vim makes it fairly easy, but that's just one editor. Although the real reason might just be a preference for html email. cheers, raf
