Re: [Mutt] format=flowed

[Mihai Lazarescu]

On Tuesday, January 08, 2019 at 16:53:11 -0600, Derek Martin wrote:


On Sat, Jan 05, 2019 at 10:48:13PM +, Samir Benmendil wrote:
> > I stopped using format=flowed because not much besides Mutt
> > supports it, and particularly not GMail and Outlook.
>
> That's interesting. I've been using format=flowed for ages now,
> never really checked how it looked in other MUA. It worked in Mutt
> and I was happy with that. Never got any complaints.

I suspect this is more to do with either your particular recipients
happen to use clients that support it (Mutt, Thunderbird are the only
ones to my knowledge)


For what I know, Sylpheed-Claws, K9 (Android app), mu4e, 
AquaMail also support it.


Mihai

Re: format=flowed

[Derek Martin]

On Sat, Jan 05, 2019 at 10:48:13PM +, Samir Benmendil wrote:
> > I stopped using format=flowed because not much besides Mutt
> > supports it, and particularly not GMail and Outlook.
> 
> That's interesting. I've been using format=flowed for ages now,
> never really checked how it looked in other MUA. It worked in Mutt
> and I was happy with that. Never got any complaints.

I suspect this is more to do with either your particular recipients
happen to use clients that support it (Mutt, Thunderbird are the only
ones to my knowledge) or that, since ancient times e-mail variously
gets malformatted by various clients under a wide range of
circumstances, and people have just become accustomed to it and ignore
the problem.  Probably some of both.

-- 
Derek D. Martinhttp://www.pizzashack.org/   GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02
-=-=-=-=-
This message is posted from an invalid address.  Replying to it will result in
undeliverable mail due to spam prevention.  Sorry for the inconvenience.



pgpgYNLwyFQm6.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Re: format=flowed

[José María Mateos]

On Sat, Jan 05, 2019 at 05:02:14PM -0500, Ed Blackman wrote:

> On Wed, Dec 19, 2018 at 11:10:02AM -0800, Will Yardley wrote:
>
> > I honestly think that without better editor integration, and /
> > or some way of validating that the content is actually formatted
> > properly (or post-editing formatting within Mutt), that it's not
> > a good idea for Mutt to support flowed text. Even when people are
> > using the right options in vim and doing everything else right, it
> > seems very fragile and prone to generating invalid flowed emails.

I tried to use flowed text with mutt + vim but there was always 
something that I couldn't get right. The fact that one needs to do some 
macro-editing of the text of the message (adding spaces, etc) seemed a 
bit off to me. Plus, sometimes I reply to e-mails that contain code 
snippets, and in those cases automatic wrapping tends to create some 
havoc.

In the end, I settled with hard line breaks plus this line in my mail 
vim config file:

set formatprg=par\ 72q

par seems to be smarter than regular vim reflowing. I always got some 
"orphaned" line that I needed to join with the next one manually, but 
this works like a charm.

Cheers,

-- 
José María (Chema) Mateos || https://rinzewind.org/

Re: format=flowed

[Kurt Hackenberg]

On 1/5/19 5:48 PM, Samir Benmendil wrote:

I stopped using format=flowed because not much besides Mutt supports 
it, and particularly not GMail and Outlook.


That's interesting. I've been using format=flowed for ages now, never 
really checked how it looked in other MUA. It worked in Mutt and I was 
happy with that. Never got any complaints.


Thunderbird does format=flowed, both displays and composes it.

Re: format=flowed

[Samir Benmendil]

On Jan 05, 2019 at 17:02, Ed Blackman wrote:

On Wed, Dec 19, 2018 at 11:10:02AM -0800, Will Yardley wrote:
Even when people are using the right options in vim and doing 
everything else right, it seems very fragile and prone to generating 
invalid flowed emails.


I stopped using format=flowed because not much besides Mutt supports 
it, and particularly not GMail and Outlook.


That's interesting. I've been using format=flowed for ages now, never 
really checked how it looked in other MUA. It worked in Mutt and I was 
happy with that. Never got any complaints.


But when I did use it, I configured vim to use syntax highlighting to 
add an underline highlight to the trailing space at the end of a line 
that format=flowed uses to know that it's a line that should be 
flowed.


It was subtle enough to not bother me when composing (since the sentence
your composing has a "trailing space" before you start the next word),
but blatent enough to see when I'm looking over the message before
saving.

In ~/.vim/after/syntax/mail.vim, I have:

" color trailing spaces to easily see where format=flowed lines will wrap and
" not wrap
syntax match lineEndWrap / $/
hi WrapLines term=bold,underline cterm=bold,underline gui=bold,underline

if  == "dark"
 hi WrapLines ctermfg=White ctermbg=Black guifg=Black guibg=White
else
 hi WrapLines ctermfg=Black ctermbg=White guifg=Black guibg=White
endif

hi def link lineEndWrap WrapLines


Vim has built in support for highlighting trailing spaces using 
`listchars`.


I have this in my vimrc. It's also helpful to highlight them in other 
documents, but I don't want to be distracted while in INSERT mode.


set listchars+=trail:·
augroup trailing
   au!
   au InsertEnter * :set listchars-=trail:·
   au InsertLeave * :set listchars+=trail:·
augroup END

In addition, I also do some auto formatting for every email I compose, 
in `ftplugin/mail.vim`, I have:


setlocal formatoptions+=awt " auto-format

" pad '>' with a single space
keeppatterns keepjumps %s/>\ze\([^> ]\|$\)/> /e
" remove spaces between '>'
keeppatterns keepjumps %s/> >/>>/ge
" remove trailing spaces in header
keeppatterns keepjumps 1;/^$/s/ *$//e


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Description: PGP signature

Re: format=flowed

[Ed Blackman]

On Wed, Dec 19, 2018 at 11:10:02AM -0800, Will Yardley wrote:
> I honestly think that without better editor integration, and / or some
> way of validating that the content is actually formatted properly (or
> post-editing formatting within Mutt), that it's not a good idea for Mutt
> to support flowed text. Even when people are using the right options in
> vim and doing everything else right, it seems very fragile and prone to
> generating invalid flowed emails.

I stopped using format=flowed because not much besides Mutt supports it, 
and particularly not GMail and Outlook.  But when I did use it, I 
configured vim to use syntax highlighting to add an underline highlight 
to the trailing space at the end of a line that format=flowed uses to 
know that it's a line that should be flowed.

It was subtle enough to not bother me when composing (since the sentence 
your composing has a "trailing space" before you start the next word), 
but blatent enough to see when I'm looking over the message before 
saving.

In ~/.vim/after/syntax/mail.vim, I have:

" color trailing spaces to easily see where format=flowed lines will wrap and
" not wrap
syntax match lineEndWrap / $/
hi WrapLines term=bold,underline cterm=bold,underline gui=bold,underline

if  == "dark"
  hi WrapLines ctermfg=White ctermbg=Black guifg=Black guibg=White
else
  hi WrapLines ctermfg=Black ctermbg=White guifg=Black guibg=White
endif

hi def link lineEndWrap WrapLines

-- 
Ed Blackman

Re: format=flowed

[Victor Sudakov]

Cameron Simpson wrote:
> On 19Dec2018 23:39, Victor Sudakov  wrote:
> >Christian Ebert wrote:
> >>* Victor Sudakov on Wednesday, December 19, 2018 at 19:44:27 +0700:
> >>>Cameron Simpson wrote:
> On 19Dec2018 13:05, Victor Sudakov  wrote:
> >Does this very message conform to the flowed format? [...]
> 
> I think so. It renders just fine in my mutt (flows nicely) and when I
> look at the headers and text directly it all seems good. And if I send
> both your message and one of mine off to my gmail account they both
> render badly.
> >>>
> >>>But your message doesn't flow in my mutt when I resize the terminal
> >>>window!
> >>
> >>It would/will if you do a sync-mailbox - bound to $ by default
> >>iirc.
> >
> >I did not know that. I expected it to reflow on SIGWINCH or something.
> >
> >It really does reflow on "$". Thank you.
> 
> It might be on redisplay: the display_filter gets rerun with a specific 
> window. Just try switch to another message and back.

Yes, it works this way too.

And it looks nicer than sending messages with no line-breaks at all
within each paragraph as John Hawkinson suggests. Because if I make my
xterm very wide, f=f messages don't get too wide (flowing stops at about
70 columns).

While in John's messages, each paragraph becomes a very long line which
is difficult to read.

-- 
Victor Sudakov,  VAS4-RIPE, VAS47-RIPN
2:5005/49@fidonet http://vas.tomsk.ru/

Re: format=flowed

[Cameron Simpson]

On 19Dec2018 23:39, Victor Sudakov  wrote:

Christian Ebert wrote:

* Victor Sudakov on Wednesday, December 19, 2018 at 19:44:27 +0700:

Cameron Simpson wrote:

On 19Dec2018 13:05, Victor Sudakov  wrote:

Does this very message conform to the flowed format? [...]


I think so. It renders just fine in my mutt (flows nicely) and when I
look at the headers and text directly it all seems good. And if I send
both your message and one of mine off to my gmail account they both
render badly.


But your message doesn't flow in my mutt when I resize the terminal
window!


It would/will if you do a sync-mailbox - bound to $ by default
iirc.


I did not know that. I expected it to reflow on SIGWINCH or something.

It really does reflow on "$". Thank you.


It might be on redisplay: the display_filter gets rerun with a specific 
window. Just try switch to another message and back.


Cheers,
Cameron Simpson 

Re: format=flowed

[Victor Sudakov]

Will Yardley wrote:
> 
> > Only tangentially relevant, I spent a while trying to get
> > format=flowed to work effectively a year or so ago and couldn't easily
> > do so (perhaps I was testing against Gmail, I don't recall), and ended
> > up just converting to sending messages with no line-breaks at all
> > within each paragraph.
>  
> Yes.
> 
> I honestly think that without better editor integration, and / or some
> way of validating that the content is actually formatted properly (or
> post-editing formatting within Mutt), that it's not a good idea for Mutt
> to support flowed text. Even when people are using the right options in
> vim and doing everything else right, it seems very fragile and prone to
> generating invalid flowed emails.

After some experimenting, I think I agree with you, and I'm unsetting
$text_flowed and the relevant options in ~/.vim/ftplugin/mail.vim for
now.

-- 
Victor Sudakov,  VAS4-RIPE, VAS47-RIPN
2:5005/49@fidonet http://vas.tomsk.ru/

Re: format=flowed

[Will Yardley]

On Wed, Dec 19, 2018 at 08:13:02AM -0500, John Hawkinson wrote:

> Only tangentially relevant, I spent a while trying to get
> format=flowed to work effectively a year or so ago and couldn't easily
> do so (perhaps I was testing against Gmail, I don't recall), and ended
> up just converting to sending messages with no line-breaks at all
> within each paragraph.
 
Yes.

I honestly think that without better editor integration, and / or some
way of validating that the content is actually formatted properly (or
post-editing formatting within Mutt), that it's not a good idea for Mutt
to support flowed text. Even when people are using the right options in
vim and doing everything else right, it seems very fragile and prone to
generating invalid flowed emails.

w

Re: format=flowed

[Victor Sudakov]

Christian Ebert wrote:

* Victor Sudakov on Wednesday, December 19, 2018 at 19:44:27 +0700:

Cameron Simpson wrote:

On 19Dec2018 13:05, Victor Sudakov  wrote:

Does this very message conform to the flowed format? [...]


I think so. It renders just fine in my mutt (flows nicely) and when I
look at the headers and text directly it all seems good. And if I send
both your message and one of mine off to my gmail account they both
render badly.


But your message doesn't flow in my mutt when I resize the terminal
window!


It would/will if you do a sync-mailbox - bound to $ by default
iirc.


I did not know that. I expected it to reflow on SIGWINCH or something.

It really does reflow on "$". Thank you.


--
Victor Sudakov,  VAS4-RIPE, VAS47-RIPN
2:5005/49@fidonet http://vas.tomsk.ru/

Re: format=flowed

[Christian Ebert]

* Victor Sudakov on Wednesday, December 19, 2018 at 19:44:27 +0700:

Cameron Simpson wrote:

On 19Dec2018 13:05, Victor Sudakov  wrote:

Does this very message conform to the flowed format? [...]


I think so. It renders just fine in my mutt (flows nicely) and when I
look at the headers and text directly it all seems good. And if I send
both your message and one of mine off to my gmail account they both
render badly.


But your message doesn't flow in my mutt when I resize the terminal 
window!


It would/will if you do a sync-mailbox - bound to $ by default 
iirc.


--
LAST SHIP HOME
Die Weltumsegelung der Peter von Danzig
Ein Film von Michael Weber und Christian Ebert
--->> https://lastshiphome.de

Re: format=flowed

[John Hawkinson]

Only tangentially relevant, I spent a while trying to get format=flowed to work 
effectively a year or so ago and couldn't easily do so (perhaps I was testing 
against Gmail, I don't recall), and ended up just converting to sending 
messages with no line-breaks at all within each paragraph.

Like this.

I'm not particular proud of this, and it's incompatible with quoting, so I put 
hard line breaks when I quote text, and it's somewhat annoying to compose (I 
use emacs' M-x visual-line-mode to do so), but it certainly wraps properly in 
most clients.

--jh...@mit.edu
  John Hawkinson

Re: format=flowed

[Victor Sudakov]

Cameron Simpson wrote:

On 19Dec2018 13:05, Victor Sudakov  wrote:

Does this very message conform to the flowed format? [...]


I think so. It renders just fine in my mutt (flows nicely) and when I
look at the headers and text directly it all seems good. And if I send
both your message and one of mine off to my gmail account they both
render badly.


But your message doesn't flow in my mutt when I resize the terminal 
window!




You're doing the right thing, and GMail are not.


I'm not so sure. I've just received a private mail from Anders 
Damsgaard (composed by mutt+vim), and his message flows nicely in 
GMail. (but not in mutt, again).


Anders' message is different from mine however: it is encoded in QP, 
and his paragraphs look like 


bla bla bla bla bla=20
bla bla bla bla bla=20
bla bla bla bla bla=20
bla bla bla bla bla=20
bla bla bla bla bla=20

instead of plain ascii spaces at line ends, like in my message.

--
Victor Sudakov,  VAS4-RIPE, VAS47-RIPN
2:5005/49@fidonet http://vas.tomsk.ru/

Re: format=flowed

[Cameron Simpson]

On 19Dec2018 13:05, Victor Sudakov  wrote:

Does this very message conform to the flowed format? [...]


I think so. It renders just fine in my mutt (flows nicely) and when I 
look at the headers and text directly it all seems good. And if I send 
both your message and one of mine off to my gmail account they both 
render badly.


You're doing the right thing, and GMail are not.

Of course the feature of format-flowed is that it is still pretty 
readable when rendered directly without knowing about the format, which 
is why the soft folds are meant to be near the conventional width.


A bit of a poke around suggests that GMail doesn't understand 
format=flowed at all; it has no way to generate it itself for plain text 
and clearly doesn't render it correctly either. It wouldn't be the first 
time their handling of text/plain was ... substandard. They had another 
problem for years and years which currently escapes me.


Maybe the following ghastly workaround? You know how lots of mail 
clients send HTML and often an (awful awful) text/plain to go with it?  
Maybe compose in format=flowed and include a parallel basic HTML form to 
accompany it? I've not given any thought to how to make that easy.


Cheers,
Cameron Simpson 

Re: format=flowed

[Victor Sudakov]

Victor Sudakov wrote:


Does this very message conform to the flowed format? I think I have
set up mutt and vim correctly to generate valid f=f mails, but for some
reason Gmail and MS Outlook still show hard line breaks where I think
there should not be any. What have I missed?



This is how it looks in Gmail: 
http://admin.sibptus.ru/~vas/Screenshot_2018-12-19-13-08-05-851_com.google.android.gm.png


Why the line breaks?


--
Victor Sudakov,  VAS4-RIPE, VAS47-RIPN
2:5005/49@fidonet http://vas.tomsk.ru/

format=flowed

[Victor Sudakov]

Dear Colleagues,

Does this very message conform to the flowed format? I think I have 
set up mutt and vim correctly to generate valid f=f mails, but for some 
reason Gmail and MS Outlook still show hard line breaks where I think 
there should not be any. What have I missed?


Sample text below.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Etiam laoreet 
finibus tellus a blandit. Fusce auctor dolor ullamcorper porttitor 
malesuada. Donec sollicitudin turpis sed leo fringilla, ut eleifend 
nisi gravida. Pellentesque a interdum odio, vitae vehicula lacus. Nunc 
interdum, sapien nec sollicitudin volutpat, lectus justo facilisis 
tellus, nec finibus enim lectus mollis nulla. Vestibulum sodales dolor 
vitae lacus egestas, eget tempor dolor dictum. In a sem eget augue 
rhoncus eleifend vel eu eros.


Maecenas maximus risus ut massa consequat, sit amet tincidunt metus 
dignissim. Morbi scelerisque non ex quis molestie. Etiam facilisis 
volutpat consequat. Integer eget auctor mi. Quisque sit amet 
scelerisque mauris. In eu consectetur arcu, eu tincidunt orci. Aenean 
convallis sollicitudin eleifend. Aliquam porttitor tortor eget 
imperdiet tincidunt. Vestibulum turpis lacus, iaculis eget facilisis 
eget, fermentum a magna. Curabitur pulvinar nisi vel ex sagittis, 
vitae semper sem fermentum.


Quisque vel tristique arcu, id ornare purus. Fusce volutpat ligula ac 
tempor gravida. Vestibulum neque ex, cursus ut odio vitae, interdum 
interdum tortor. In facilisis fringilla felis, nec mollis magna 
feugiat at. Mauris vitae imperdiet libero. Maecenas nibh eros, tempus 
ut mi porta, vehicula vehicula ex. Phasellus volutpat est venenatis 
elit vulputate finibus. Aliquam erat volutpat.


Curabitur cursus felis nec est suscipit, ut ultrices metus lobortis. 
Mauris eget sollicitudin mauris. Cras feugiat tortor ac velit congue 
porta. Ut auctor mi at quam rutrum sodales a a nulla. In auctor tempor 
convallis. Maecenas convallis nibh sapien, ut bibendum eros vehicula 
vitae. Maecenas consequat facilisis laoreet. Donec id ligula justo. 
Nulla nec dui id ligula malesuada tristique eget id augue. Quisque ac 
vulputate sem, fermentum pulvinar felis. Phasellus eu fermentum lacus. 
Aenean maximus felis lorem, ac ultrices tellus mollis a. Vivamus vel 
ante et odio eleifend rutrum vitae id leo. Nunc eu purus id tellus 
dapibus malesuada. Fusce pretium viverra est nec volutpat. Nunc 
sagittis et massa sed scelerisque.




--
Victor Sudakov,  VAS4-RIPE, VAS47-RIPN
2:5005/49@fidonet http://vas.tomsk.ru/

Re: format=flowed

[Cameron Simpson]

On 18Sep2015 12:14, Christian Brabandt  wrote:

On Fr, 18 Sep 2015, Erik Christiansen wrote:
Keeping everything vim-related in one config file is _wy_ cleaner.  
Cluttering the filesystem with a swarm of files seems untidy, and is a good 
way to leave config behind when moving to a new installation/OS upgrade, I 
figure.


Is there much of a difference of backing up ~/.vim/ instead of ~/.vimrc?  It 
is basically self contained and it contains every thing for setting up the new  
environment. plugins, configuration, undo-files, session files, custom 
scripts, spelling files, syntax files,


Just to this; I keep my primary machine as my reference. (I also revision 
=control some of the configs, but not rigorously alas). I have a script called 
"putacc" which rsyncs my environment to multiple remote hosts - a parallel 
rsync with a --files-from list of items and some exclusions.


So keeping mutliple remote homedirs is very easy, as is moving to a new 
environment: "putacc other-host".


Cheers,
Cameron Simpson 

Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.
- Rich Kulawiec
Any sufficiently advanced feature is indistinguishable from a bug.
- Greg Alexander's corollary 

Re: format=flowed

[Christian Brabandt]

On Fr, 18 Sep 2015, Erik Christiansen wrote:

> So, in .vimrc, something vaguely like:
> 
> au BufNewFile,BufRead   ~/Desktop/mutt-*   call Set_for_mutt()
[...]

You don't need that autocommand. Simply create a file 
~/.vim/ftplugin/mail.vim and put all mutt related stuff there and
add an entry :filetype plugin  to your .vimrc

Keeps your .vimrc cleaner.

regards,
Christian
-- 

Re: format=flowed

[Erik Christiansen]

On 18.09.15 09:47, Christian Brabandt wrote:
> 
> On Fr, 18 Sep 2015, Erik Christiansen wrote:
> 
> > So, in .vimrc, something vaguely like:
> > 
> > au BufNewFile,BufRead   ~/Desktop/mutt-*   call Set_for_mutt()
> [...]
> 
> You don't need that autocommand. Simply create a file 
> ~/.vim/ftplugin/mail.vim and put all mutt related stuff there and
> add an entry :filetype plugin  to your .vimrc

Thanks Christian, for the alternative implementation, but I don't need
~/.vim/ftplugin/mail.vim when I can equally easily do it in .vimrc.

> Keeps your .vimrc cleaner.

Keeping everything vim-related in one config file is _wy_ cleaner.
Cluttering the filesystem with a swarm of files seems untidy, and is a
good way to leave config behind when moving to a new installation/OS
upgrade, I figure.

I have folding enabled in .vimrc, and the mutt stuff has its own section:

" Alt-O & Alt-I between files, just as ^O & ^I retrace move history:
" Convenience: 
" Cursor Appearance and behaviour:
" Custom Mode Settings:  
" Date Insertion:   
" Encryption:  
" Filename-dependent autocommands:
" Folding:   
" Function Keys:
" Mutt:
" Numbered Lists: 
" Paste  
" Path: 
" Quickfix:
" Spellchecking:  

Now there's no need to hunt around amongst all sorts of files, wondering
where stuff is configured - it's configured in the config file!

While ftplugin doubtless has some use cases, somewhere, I suspect that
it's a bit like those tabs things in vim. I still find them a step
backwards from just using buffers and the :bu commands. (Admittedly
mapped, so  does :bu)

Erik

Re: format=flowed

[Samir Benmendil]

On Sep 18, 2015 at 19:09, Erik Christiansen wrote:

On 18.09.15 09:47, Christian Brabandt wrote:

On Fr, 18 Sep 2015, Erik Christiansen wrote:
> So, in .vimrc, something vaguely like:
>
> au BufNewFile,BufRead   ~/Desktop/mutt-*   call Set_for_mutt()
[...]

You don't need that autocommand. Simply create a file 
~/.vim/ftplugin/mail.vim and put all mutt related stuff there and add 
an entry :filetype plugin  to your .vimrc
Thanks Christian, for the alternative implementation, but I don't need 
~/.vim/ftplugin/mail.vim when I can equally easily do it in .vimrc.



Keeps your .vimrc cleaner.
Keeping everything vim-related in one config file is _wy_ cleaner. 
Cluttering the filesystem with a swarm of files seems untidy, and is a 
good way to leave config behind when moving to a new installation/OS 
upgrade, I figure.

Not if you have your vim folder under version control.

Now there's no need to hunt around amongst all sorts of files, 
wondering where stuff is configured - it's configured in the config 
file!

There's a function for that:

| " edit configs  {{{2
| function! EditConfig(what)
| let l:dir = split(,',')[0]
| if a:what == 'vimrc'
| let l:file = expand($MYVIMRC)
| elseif ! isdirectory(globpath(l:dir, a:what))
| echoe a:what." is not valid!"
| elseif empty()
| echoe 'filetype is empty!'
| else
| let l:file = l:dir.'/'.a:what.'/'.'.vim'
| endif
| 
| execute ':vsplit '.file

| execute ':lcd %:p:h'
| endf
| nmap ev :call EditConfig('vimrc')
| nmap ef :call EditConfig('ftplugin')
| nmap es :call EditConfig('syntax')
| nmap ei :call EditConfig('indent')
| nmap eu :UltiSnipsEdit:lcd %:p:h

This is way simpler than searching for it in the huge monolithic vimrc.

Re: format=flowed

[Erik Christiansen]

On 18.09.15 10:41, Cameron Simpson wrote:
> I'm pretty sure the vim mode I'm using doesn't do quoting correctly
> if I edit the quoted sections. Need to check that on my end.

While editing a mutt tmp file, it can be useful to set something like:

set formatoptions=qrjl

The 'q' causes (multiple levels of) quoting to be respected.
The 'r' allows a  to be inserted before a quoted sentence, to move
it to a new line, _auto_quoted_. (I.e. preserving its status)
The 'j' causes elision of the quoting when two short lines are joined.
(Only preserves the sense if the two are at the same quoting level.)
There is no 'o', because  is more useful for inserting unquoted
text, i.e. in-line replies.
The 'l' stops breaking of long lines in insert mode, allowing
"textwidth" to be deliberately exceeded. (YMMV)

> Things are further complicated by receive messages from people not
> using format=flowed. I probably need to incorporate their quotes
> differently depending

In either case, here, vim (in mutt) manually reflows a paragraph of
quoted text to "textwidth", respecting (multiple levels of) quoting,
with "gq}". (Mine's automatically set to 72 when I'm in mutt.)

Admittedly recognition of a quoted paragraph requires prior deletion of
the quoting ">" on the inter-paragraph blank line, and reflowing all of
the quote is a pain if there's character art.

So, in .vimrc, something vaguely like:

au BufNewFile,BufRead   ~/Desktop/mutt-*   call Set_for_mutt()

function! Set_for_mutt()
set textwidth=72 foldmethod=manual
set formatoptions=qrjl

" Change subthread Subject:
noremap  ^[gg/Re:^Mce[Was^[A]^[0Wi
endfunction

And in .muttrc:

set tmpdir="~/Desktop"

to provide some chance of preserving a half-finished post in the event
of a crash.

Optional in .vimrc:

noremap ^W gq}

Where ^W is a a Ctr-W, saving some typing every time we reflow.

Trimming to the sentence level with "d)" is more convenient in quoted
text when it can easily be reflowed afterwards.

Automatic reflowing is possible, with 'a', but that's too scary.

Erik

-- 
Give a man a computer program and you give him a headache, but teach him
to program computers and you give him the power to create headaches for
others for the rest of his life.  - R. B. Forest

Re: format=flowed

[Samir Benmendil]

On Sep 18, 2015 at 17:00, Erik Christiansen wrote:

On 18.09.15 10:41, Cameron Simpson wrote:
I'm pretty sure the vim mode I'm using doesn't do quoting correctly 
if I edit the quoted sections. Need to check that on my end.

While editing a mutt tmp file, it can be useful to set something like:

set formatoptions=qrjl
This will not generate f=f messages. You need to 'set fo+=w' so that 
trailing white space indicate a paragraph continues on the next line.


The 'l' stops breaking of long lines in insert mode, allowing 
"textwidth" to be deliberately exceeded. (YMMV)
AFAIC f=f messages should still "hard wrap" at 72 char, so IMO 't' is 
the better choice.


Things are further complicated by receive messages from people not 
using format=flowed. I probably need to incorporate their quotes 
differently depending


In either case, here, vim (in mutt) manually reflows a paragraph of
quoted text to "textwidth", respecting (multiple levels of) quoting,
with "gq}". (Mine's automatically set to 72 when I'm in mutt.)
'gq' will also not reflow the paragraph correctly since it doesn't add 
spaces at the end. You want to use 'J' when 'set fo=a', unfortunately it 
doesn't take an operator so I use visual selection for that.


I just realized that f=f requires that there is no space between '>'s in 
multi level quotes, i.e. '> > quote' is not a valid 2-level quote, it 
should be '>> quote' or '>>quote'. I haven't figured out a way to set 
this up properly in vim.

Re: format=flowed

[Samir Benmendil]

On Sep 18, 2015 at 20:17, Erik Christiansen wrote:

On 18.09.15 10:33, Samir Benmendil wrote:

On Sep 18, 2015 at 19:09, Erik Christiansen wrote:

Now there's no need to hunt around amongst all sorts of files,
wondering where stuff is configured - it's configured in the config
file!

There's a function for that:

| " edit configs  {{{2
| function! EditConfig(what)
| let l:dir = split(,',')[0]
| if a:what == 'vimrc'
| let l:file = expand($MYVIMRC)
| elseif ! isdirectory(globpath(l:dir, a:what))
| echoe a:what." is not valid!"
| elseif empty()
| echoe 'filetype is empty!'
| else
| let l:file = l:dir.'/'.a:what.'/'.'.vim'
| endif
| | execute ':vsplit '.file
| execute ':lcd %:p:h'
| endf
| nmap ev :call EditConfig('vimrc')
| nmap ef :call EditConfig('ftplugin')
| nmap es :call EditConfig('syntax')
| nmap ei :call EditConfig('indent')
| nmap eu :UltiSnipsEdit:lcd %:p:h

This is way simpler than searching for it in the huge monolithic 
vimrc.

Samir, your irony gave me a very good belly laugh!
"simpler" was probably not the right choice of word. "easier" is what I 
meant to say.
If I want to change filetype specific settings I can hit ef and 
I'll get a new split with a small file containing settings only relevant 
to the current filetype regardless of what that filetype is.



With folding, the attractively monolithic .vimrc is visually small.
Structure makes everything readily accessible - without any need for
complex functions to get to a swarm of files.
Of course, folding is great, and everything in my vimrc is folded as 
well.



Still, you are most welcome to do it your way.

And so are you to disagree with me.

Samir

Re: format=flowed

[Christian Brabandt]

Hi Erik!

On Fr, 18 Sep 2015, Erik Christiansen wrote:

> On 18.09.15 09:47, Christian Brabandt wrote:
> > 
> > On Fr, 18 Sep 2015, Erik Christiansen wrote:
> > 
> > > So, in .vimrc, something vaguely like:
> > > 
> > > au BufNewFile,BufRead   ~/Desktop/mutt-*   call Set_for_mutt()
> > [...]
> > 
> > You don't need that autocommand. Simply create a file 
> > ~/.vim/ftplugin/mail.vim and put all mutt related stuff there and
> > add an entry :filetype plugin  to your .vimrc
> 
> Thanks Christian, for the alternative implementation, but I don't need
> ~/.vim/ftplugin/mail.vim when I can equally easily do it in .vimrc.

I guess taste matters. I used to think the same, until my vimrc grew too 
long and complex. Then I started to use folding but even then it started 
to get confusing eventually. So I am now using the proposed Vim way.

If I need to configure my mail configuration, I have everything in my 
folder ~/.vim/ftplugin/mail/
Python? ~/.vim/ftplugin/python.vim
C?~/.vim/ftplugin/c.vim

(Okay additionally there is the after/ folder, which complicates things 
a bit again)

> > Keeps your .vimrc cleaner.
> 
> Keeping everything vim-related in one config file is _wy_ cleaner.
> Cluttering the filesystem with a swarm of files seems untidy, and is a
> good way to leave config behind when moving to a new installation/OS
> upgrade, I figure.

Is there much of a difference of backing up ~/.vim/ instead of ~/.vimrc?
It is basically self contained and it contains every thing for setting 
up the new environment. plugins, configuration, undo-files, session 
files, custom scripts, spelling files, syntax files,

Plus for larger configuration files, this will impact startup time. 

I used to have my .vimrc on a Windows share. Adding some plugins made my 
vim startup grow to up to several 10 of seconds. It got better, after I 
moved my configuration to a local hard disk and even better, once I 
removed unneeded configuration files, that have been read, although I 
did not need them (like those menu files, that got loaded, although I 
explicitly set :set go= Using :set go=M helped).

> I have folding enabled in .vimrc, and the mutt stuff has its own section:
> 
> " Alt-O & Alt-I between files, just as ^O & ^I retrace move history:

Those things tend to break in the terminal.

> While ftplugin doubtless has some use cases, somewhere, I suspect that
> it's a bit like those tabs things in vim. I still find them a step
> backwards from just using buffers and the :bu commands. (Admittedly
> mapped, so  does :bu)

I use tabs, if I need them, and buffers if I need buffers. I don't see 
how they are "backwards". 

regards,
Christian
-- 
* BenC wonders why he has upgraded to 3.3.5-1 before teh X maintainer

Re: format=flowed

[Erik Christiansen]

On 18.09.15 10:33, Samir Benmendil wrote:
> On Sep 18, 2015 at 19:09, Erik Christiansen wrote:
> >Now there's no need to hunt around amongst all sorts of files,
> >wondering where stuff is configured - it's configured in the config
> >file!
> There's a function for that:
> 
> | " edit configs  {{{2
> | function! EditConfig(what)
> | let l:dir = split(,',')[0]
> | if a:what == 'vimrc'
> | let l:file = expand($MYVIMRC)
> | elseif ! isdirectory(globpath(l:dir, a:what))
> | echoe a:what." is not valid!"
> | elseif empty()
> | echoe 'filetype is empty!'
> | else
> | let l:file = l:dir.'/'.a:what.'/'.'.vim'
> | endif
> | | execute ':vsplit '.file
> | execute ':lcd %:p:h'
> | endf
> | nmap ev :call EditConfig('vimrc')
> | nmap ef :call EditConfig('ftplugin')
> | nmap es :call EditConfig('syntax')
> | nmap ei :call EditConfig('indent')
> | nmap eu :UltiSnipsEdit:lcd %:p:h
> 
> This is way simpler than searching for it in the huge monolithic vimrc.

Samir, your irony gave me a very good belly laugh!

With folding, the attractively monolithic .vimrc is visually small.
Structure makes everything readily accessible - without any need for
complex functions to get to a swarm of files.

Still, you are most welcome to do it your way.

Erik
(Who found that folding fostered much improved structure in a 430 page/
 26k line file of *nix notes.)

-- 
The ultimate barrier is one's viewpoint.
  - Terry Pratchett, "The Dark Side of the Sun"

Re: format=flowed

[Will Yardley]

On Fri, Sep 18, 2015 at 07:09:17PM +1000, Erik Christiansen wrote:
> On 18.09.15 09:47, Christian Brabandt wrote:
> > 
> > On Fr, 18 Sep 2015, Erik Christiansen wrote:
> > 
> > > So, in .vimrc, something vaguely like:
> > > 
> > > au BufNewFile,BufRead   ~/Desktop/mutt-*   call Set_for_mutt()
> > [...]
> > 
> > You don't need that autocommand. Simply create a file 
> > ~/.vim/ftplugin/mail.vim and put all mutt related stuff there and
> > add an entry :filetype plugin  to your .vimrc
> 
> Thanks Christian, for the alternative implementation, but I don't need
> ~/.vim/ftplugin/mail.vim when I can equally easily do it in .vimrc.

For me
if has("autocmd")
au FileType mail set ...

works fine without any additional tweaking.

w

Re: format=flowed

[Ian Zimmerman]

On 2015-09-16 16:38 +0100, Samir Benmendil wrote:

> > mutt 1.5.21 - the version in Debian wheezy, which lots of us run for 
> > unrelated reasons [1].  That said, I compile it from the source 
> > package anyway, so I will get to upgrading it at some point.

> Please do. According to the changelog, the f=f handling was fixed a mere 
> two weeks after the 1.5.21 release, *5 years ago*.

Well I still run the init system from 5 years ago, and I'm glad I do :P

Anyway, I merged that particular commit, set the options, and Cameron's
emails now display correctly.  Thanks for the hint :)

-- 
Please *no* private copies of mailing list or newsgroup messages.
Rule 420: All persons more than eight miles high to leave the court.

Re: format=flowed

[Matthew Phillips]

On Fri, Sep 18, 2015 at 09:38:49AM +1000, Cameron Simpson wrote:
> On 17Sep2015 15:19, Ian Zimmerman  wrote:
> >On 2015-09-16 16:38 +0100, Samir Benmendil wrote:
> >> > mutt 1.5.21 - the version in Debian wheezy, which lots of us run for
> >> > unrelated reasons [1].  That said, I compile it from the source
> >> > package anyway, so I will get to upgrading it at some point.
> >
> >> Please do. According to the changelog, the f=f handling was fixed a mere
> >> two weeks after the 1.5.21 release, *5 years ago*.
> >
> >Well I still run the init system from 5 years ago, and I'm glad I do :P
> 
> Indeedy. The more I learn about systemd the less I like it; I hope my Ubuntu 
> server never quietly moves to it.
> 

The water's warm over here in BSD-land, come join us :)

Re: format=flowed

[Cameron Simpson]

On 17Sep2015 21:23, Matthew Phillips  wrote:

On Fri, Sep 18, 2015 at 09:38:49AM +1000, Cameron Simpson wrote:

On 17Sep2015 15:19, Ian Zimmerman  wrote:
>On 2015-09-16 16:38 +0100, Samir Benmendil wrote:
>> > mutt 1.5.21 - the version in Debian wheezy, which lots of us run for
>> > unrelated reasons [1].  That said, I compile it from the source
>> > package anyway, so I will get to upgrading it at some point.
>
>> Please do. According to the changelog, the f=f handling was fixed a mere
>> two weeks after the 1.5.21 release, *5 years ago*.
>
>Well I still run the init system from 5 years ago, and I'm glad I do :P

Indeedy. The more I learn about systemd the less I like it; I hope my Ubuntu
server never quietly moves to it.


The water's warm over here in BSD-land, come join us :)


My firewalls are OpenBSD (sometimes FreeBSD depending on hardware support 
status, but I prefer OpenBSD). This Mac is a BSD...


Cheers,
Cameron Simpson 

Re: format=flowed

[Cameron Simpson]

Sorry, I've been largely offline for a day or so.

On 15Sep2015 20:11, Ian Zimmerman  wrote:

On 2015-09-16 12:41 +1000, Cameron Simpson wrote:

Could you detail what happens to my message with both the quoted and
actual reply text please?


I attach a file which is the paste of how I see your original message
when I set wrap=72 in mutt.


Thanks.

What are you actual wrap settings. I have these:

 set reflow_wrap=-4
 set wrap=-1
 set smart_wrap=yes

Cheers,
Cameron Simpson 

Re: format=flowed

[Cameron Simpson]

On 17Sep2015 15:19, Ian Zimmerman  wrote:

On 2015-09-16 16:38 +0100, Samir Benmendil wrote:

> mutt 1.5.21 - the version in Debian wheezy, which lots of us run for
> unrelated reasons [1].  That said, I compile it from the source
> package anyway, so I will get to upgrading it at some point.



Please do. According to the changelog, the f=f handling was fixed a mere
two weeks after the 1.5.21 release, *5 years ago*.


Well I still run the init system from 5 years ago, and I'm glad I do :P


Indeedy. The more I learn about systemd the less I like it; I hope my Ubuntu 
server never quietly moves to it.



Anyway, I merged that particular commit, set the options, and Cameron's
emails now display correctly.  Thanks for the hint :)


Ah, I should have paid the close attention that Samir did. I'm running:

 Mutt 1.5.23 (2014-03-12)

from MacPorts. It is probably worth at least building the latest 1.5 mutt, just 
for comparison - a fair bit has happened, including outright bugfixes.


Cheers,
Cameron Simpson 

Re: format=flowed

[Ian Zimmerman]

On 2015-09-18 09:30 +1000, Cameron Simpson wrote:

> What are you actual wrap settings. I have these:
> 
>  set reflow_wrap=-4
>  set wrap=-1
>  set smart_wrap=yes

I had no reflow patch in my mutt - see the other branch of the thread.

Your original text, at least, now displays perfectly.  Haven't tried to
play with the quotings, yet.

-- 
Please *no* private copies of mailing list or newsgroup messages.
Rule 420: All persons more than eight miles high to leave the court.

Re: format=flowed

[Cameron Simpson]

On 17Sep2015 16:53, Ian Zimmerman <i...@buug.org> wrote:

On 2015-09-18 09:30 +1000, Cameron Simpson wrote:

What are you actual wrap settings. I have these:

 set reflow_wrap=-4
 set wrap=-1
 set smart_wrap=yes


I had no reflow patch in my mutt - see the other branch of the thread.

Your original text, at least, now displays perfectly.  Haven't tried to
play with the quotings, yet.


I'm pretty sure the vim mode I'm using doesn't do quoting correctly if I edit 
the quoted sections. Need to check that on my end.


Things are further complicated by receive messages from people not using 
format=flowed. I probably need to incorporate their quotes differently 
depending


Cheers,
Cameron Simpson <c...@zip.com.au>

Re: [OT] BSD water temps [Was: format=flowed]

[Cameron Simpson]

On 17Sep2015 19:44, Ian Zimmerman  wrote:

On 2015-09-17 21:23 -0400, Matthew Phillips wrote:

The water's warm over here in BSD-land, come join us :)


I have seriously considered it, but ALSA is the one Linux thing I cannot
spare.

I'm at least trying to slowly study gentoo as it seems to stand firm, so
far.


Make sure you keep your system up to date. If you get far enough behind, it can 
be impossibly to transition to the modern release. I would advocate keeping the 
OS update physically separate from the rest in order to be able to scrub it 
with a clean install should the need arise. Distinct filesystems is enough of 
course.


It's very cool, but it can be very frustrating when there are conflicts or 
build issues.


Cheers,
Cameron Simpson 

A gentleman does not go motoring about after dark.  - J. Lucas

Re: format=flowed

[Samir Benmendil]

On Sep 15, 2015 at 20:11, Ian Zimmerman wrote:
> I attach a file which is the paste of how I see your original message
> when I set wrap=72 in mutt.
You need to set *reflow_wrap=72*.

Re: format=flowed

[Samir Benmendil]

On Sep 16, 2015 at 12:41, Cameron Simpson wrote:
> On 15Sep2015 19:27, Ian Zimmerman  wrote:
> > The result is
> > similar to what I always get reading plain text messages in Gmail: a
> > hard to read mess.  If you just had 1 long line per paragraph
> > (terminated with a space), it would fold only at 78 and look fine.
> > 
> > Am I still missing something?
> My treatment of the quoted material may be wrong (or very
> suboptimal); just looking at this message all the quoted
> lines lack trailing spaces and I need to investigate that.
> My vim setup for this is very crude.
> 
> Could you detail what happens to my message with both the
> quoted and actual reply text please?
I can reflow your normal body, but the quoted text does not reflow 
properly. How is this message reflowed? Does the quoted text in this 
message flow correctly?

How about this?
On Sep 16, 45BC at 12:41, Cicero wrote:
> On Sep 15, 45BC at 12:41, Cicero wrote:
> > Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do 
> > eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim 
> > ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut 
> > aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in 
> > reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla 
> > pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in 
> > culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
> Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do 
> eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad 
> minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut 
> aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in 
> reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla 
> pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in 
> culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

Re: format=flowed

[Ian Zimmerman]

On 2015-09-16 12:29 +0100, Samir Benmendil wrote:

> You need to set *reflow_wrap=72*.

I have no such option in my mutt.

mutt 1.5.21 - the version in Debian wheezy, which lots of us run for
unrelated reasons [1].  That said, I compile it from the source package
anyway, so I will get to upgrading it at some point.

[1]
https://lwn.net/Articles/619330/

-- 
Please *no* private copies of mailing list or newsgroup messages.
Rule 420: All persons more than eight miles high to leave the court.

Re: format=flowed

[Samir Benmendil]

On Sep 16, 2015 at 7:17, Ian Zimmerman wrote:
> On 2015-09-16 12:29 +0100, Samir Benmendil wrote:
> > You need to set *reflow_wrap=72*.
> I have no such option in my mutt.
> 
> mutt 1.5.21 - the version in Debian wheezy, which lots of us run for 
> unrelated reasons [1].  That said, I compile it from the source 
> package anyway, so I will get to upgrading it at some point.
Please do. According to the changelog, the f=f handling was fixed a mere 
two weeks after the 1.5.21 release, *5 years ago*.

Re: format=flowed

[Patrick Shanahan]

* Mike Martin  [09-15-15 20:50]:
> Sooo  old, cranky, set in my ways, etc -- how is that a problem??
> 
> 
> On 09/15/2015 05:31 PM, Fred Smith wrote:
> >On Tue, Sep 15, 2015 at 05:46:06PM -0400, Patrick Shanahan wrote:
> >>Text is text, flowed is past text as html is text but not.  And I believe
> >>html has uses only in advertising, not in personal or list email.
> >>
> >>But I *am* old, cranky, set-in-my-ways, old cranky,   And I use a text
> >>mode email client to read text emails.  Very simple.  TEXT emails, not
> >>html, flowed, pretty-print,  Next people will be emailing thank-yous
> >>for wedding gifts, not personal hand-written notes/cards.
> >Or, as I like to say  it:
> > When God invented email, He intended it to be plain text.


I still believe one should post inline or after quoted text as a book
would be read, that email is *only* text, and respect and courtesy are
required.  Quoted material is to be trimmed leaving only that which is
necessary to convey *the* message.  Threads are not to be broken.  List
post are to be replied on list and not also cc'd unless specifically
requested or necessary to include individuals who quite possibly would not
see the post otherwise.  Rules for a list are to be followed.  And that
these are not negotiable.  Most of these you might read as pre-aol.  Older
readers will recognize.  

But you will not.
-- 
(paka)Patrick Shanahan   Plainfield, Indiana, USA  @ptilopteri
http://en.opensuse.orgopenSUSE Community Memberfacebook/ptilopteri
http://wahoo.no-ip.orgPhoto Album: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/gallery2
Registered Linux User #207535@ http://linuxcounter.net

Re: format=flowed

[Ian Zimmerman]

On 2015-09-16 08:12 +1000, Cameron Simpson wrote:

> There is an issue in that Grady does need to end his long lines (==
> paragraph) with a space, or fold them with trailing spaces; otherwise
> his lines render as "fixed" in the format=flowed regime, which causes
> them to _not_ be folded for display.

OK, thanks for the explanation.

> The other side of the coin is that that spec _recommends_ folding at
> <78 in the composition phase in order than a user whose mail reader
> doesn't understand format=flowed can still see somewhat well laid out
> text.
> 
> To take an example, I'm writing this message in format=flowed but
> folding my lines at <78 (with trailing spaces to indicate reflowable
> text). The display _should_ be nicely flowed to match the reader's
> reflow settings. But if you pipe the raw message data through less
> you should at least see text folded before 78 chars, which
> accomodates simple message inspection or incompetent mail reader
> software.

I'm afraid this backfires for me (mutt 1.5.21).  What happens is that
if my wrap < your soft line length (e.g. assume wrap=72 on my side),
the pager breaks your lines _both_ at 72 _and_ at 78.  The result is
similar to what I always get reading plain text messages in Gmail: a
hard to read mess.  If you just had 1 long line per paragraph
(terminated with a space), it would fold only at 78 and look fine.

Am I still missing something?

-- 
Please *no* private copies of mailing list or newsgroup messages.
Rule 420: All persons more than eight miles high to leave the court.

Re: format=flowed

[Mike Martin]

Sooo  old, cranky, set in my ways, etc -- how is that a problem??

Regards,
Mike Martin

On 09/15/2015 05:31 PM, Fred Smith wrote:

On Tue, Sep 15, 2015 at 05:46:06PM -0400, Patrick Shanahan wrote:

Text is text, flowed is past text as html is text but not.  And I believe
html has uses only in advertising, not in personal or list email.

But I *am* old, cranky, set-in-my-ways, old cranky,   And I use a text
mode email client to read text emails.  Very simple.  TEXT emails, not
html, flowed, pretty-print,  Next people will be emailing thank-yous
for wedding gifts, not personal hand-written notes/cards.

Or, as I like to say  it:
When God invented email, He intended it to be plain text.

Re: format=flowed

[Cameron Simpson]

On 15Sep2015 19:27, Ian Zimmerman <i...@buug.org> wrote:

On 2015-09-16 08:12 +1000, Cameron Simpson wrote:

The other side of the coin is that that spec _recommends_ folding at
<78 in the composition phase in order than a user whose mail reader
doesn't understand format=flowed can still see somewhat well laid out
text.

To take an example, I'm writing this message in format=flowed but
folding my lines at <78 (with trailing spaces to indicate reflowable
text). The display _should_ be nicely flowed to match the reader's
reflow settings. But if you pipe the raw message data through less
you should at least see text folded before 78 chars, which
accomodates simple message inspection or incompetent mail reader
software.


I'm afraid this backfires for me (mutt 1.5.21).  What happens is that
if my wrap < your soft line length (e.g. assume wrap=72 on my side),
the pager breaks your lines _both_ at 72 _and_ at 78.


Can you cut/paste an example of what this means, since I don't think I 
understand.



The result is
similar to what I always get reading plain text messages in Gmail: a
hard to read mess.  If you just had 1 long line per paragraph
(terminated with a space), it would fold only at 78 and look fine.

Am I still missing something?


My treatment of the quoted material may be wrong (or very suboptimal); just 
looking at this message all the quoted lines lack trailing spaces and I need to 
investigate that. My vim setup for this is very crude.


Could you detail what happens to my message with both the quoted and actual 
reply text please?


Cheers,
Cameron Simpson <c...@zip.com.au>

Re: format=flowed

[Ian Zimmerman]

On 2015-09-16 12:41 +1000, Cameron Simpson wrote:

> Could you detail what happens to my message with both the quoted and
> actual reply text please?

I attach a file which is the paste of how I see your original message
when I set wrap=72 in mutt.

When I reset it to my default (currently 86) it breaks the lines exactly
where you do in your editor (ie. 78), and looks fine.

If you didn't break your paragraphs at all, it would break at my wrap
column (whatever it was), and also look fine.

Let's take it 1 step at a time, and tackle the quotes later :P

-- 
Please *no* private copies of mailing list or newsgroup messages.
Rule 420: All persons more than eight miles high to leave the court.


cameron
Description: Binary data

Re: format=flowed

[Fred Smith]

On Tue, Sep 15, 2015 at 05:46:06PM -0400, Patrick Shanahan wrote:
> Text is text, flowed is past text as html is text but not.  And I believe
> html has uses only in advertising, not in personal or list email.
> 
> But I *am* old, cranky, set-in-my-ways, old cranky,   And I use a text
> mode email client to read text emails.  Very simple.  TEXT emails, not
> html, flowed, pretty-print,  Next people will be emailing thank-yous
> for wedding gifts, not personal hand-written notes/cards.

Or, as I like to say  it:
When God invented email, He intended it to be plain text.

-- 
 Fred Smith -- fre...@fcshome.stoneham.ma.us -
 God made him who had no sin
  to be sin for us, so that in him
 we might become the righteousness of God."
--- Corinthians 5:21 -

Re: format=flowed

[Patrick Shanahan]

* Ian Zimmerman <i...@buug.org> [09-15-15 17:15]:
> On 2015-09-07 21:50 -0400, Patrick Shanahan wrote:
> 
> > > > set wrap=78
> > > > set smart_wrap
> > > > set reflow_wrap
> > > >
> > > >Nothing weird except habit :)
> > > 
> > > Very true.  I had neglected to set wrap.  With these settings, though,
> > > how would one even notice a format=flowed message?  (This line, for
> > > example, wraps at or before 78 characters, correct?)
> > 
> > Correct, wraps at 78 or terminal width if less but only for format=flowed. 
> > But why would you care to "notice" a post was format=flowed?  If you
> > really care, you can examine the headers.
> > 
> > ps: your posts still do not observe <78 chars.  Please set wrap
> 
> Re-reading this thread again (with a copy of the manual on the side),
> I'm lost.
> 
> The way I read the manual all these settings only matter when displaying
> a message that has been received; the message itself is never changed by
> them.
> 
> So, why and how would it matter if _Grady_ set his *wrap* variables?
> Isn't that something for Patrick to do, if Patrick wants Grady's message
> to display in a particular way?  The only way I can see Grady can
> influence the appearance of his _outgoing_ messages is with text_flowed,
> and then with his editor.

Correct, set his editor to wrap at < 78 chars.

Text is text, flowed is past text as html is text but not.  And I believe
html has uses only in advertising, not in personal or list email.

But I *am* old, cranky, set-in-my-ways, old cranky,   And I use a text
mode email client to read text emails.  Very simple.  TEXT emails, not
html, flowed, pretty-print,  Next people will be emailing thank-yous
for wedding gifts, not personal hand-written notes/cards.

-- 
(paka)Patrick Shanahan   Plainfield, Indiana, USA  @ptilopteri
http://en.opensuse.orgopenSUSE Community Memberfacebook/ptilopteri
http://wahoo.no-ip.orgPhoto Album: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/gallery2
Registered Linux User #207535@ http://linuxcounter.net

Re: format=flowed

[Cameron Simpson]

On 15Sep2015 14:07, Ian Zimmerman <i...@buug.org> wrote:

On 2015-09-07 21:50 -0400, Patrick Shanahan wrote:

> > set wrap=78
> > set smart_wrap
> > set reflow_wrap

[...]

ps: your posts still do not observe <78 chars.  Please set wrap


Re-reading this thread again (with a copy of the manual on the side),
I'm lost.

The way I read the manual all these settings only matter when displaying
a message that has been received; the message itself is never changed by
them.


That is correct.


So, why and how would it matter if _Grady_ set his *wrap* variables?
Isn't that something for Patrick to do, if Patrick wants Grady's message
to display in a particular way?  The only way I can see Grady can
influence the appearance of his _outgoing_ messages is with text_flowed,
and then with his editor.


There is an issue in that Grady does need to end his long lines (== paragraph) 
with a space, or fold them with trailing spaces; otherwise his lines render as 
"fixed" in the format=flowed regime, which causes them to _not_ be folded for 
display.


The other side of the coin is that that spec _recommends_ folding at <78 in the 
composition phase in order than a user whose mail reader doesn't understand 
format=flowed can still see somewhat well laid out text.


To take an example, I'm writing this message in format=flowed but folding my 
lines at <78 (with trailing spaces to indicate reflowable text). The display 
_should_ be nicely flowed to match the reader's reflow settings. But if you 
pipe the raw message data through less you should at least see text folded 
before 78 chars, which accomodates simple message inspection or incompetent 
mail reader software.


Cheers,
Cameron Simpson <c...@zip.com.au>

Re: format=flowed

[Ian Zimmerman]

On 2015-09-07 21:50 -0400, Patrick Shanahan wrote:

> > > set wrap=78
> > > set smart_wrap
> > > set reflow_wrap
> > >
> > >Nothing weird except habit :)
> > 
> > Very true.  I had neglected to set wrap.  With these settings, though,
> > how would one even notice a format=flowed message?  (This line, for
> > example, wraps at or before 78 characters, correct?)
> 
> Correct, wraps at 78 or terminal width if less but only for format=flowed. 
> But why would you care to "notice" a post was format=flowed?  If you
> really care, you can examine the headers.
> 
> ps: your posts still do not observe <78 chars.  Please set wrap

Re-reading this thread again (with a copy of the manual on the side),
I'm lost.

The way I read the manual all these settings only matter when displaying
a message that has been received; the message itself is never changed by
them.

So, why and how would it matter if _Grady_ set his *wrap* variables?
Isn't that something for Patrick to do, if Patrick wants Grady's message
to display in a particular way?  The only way I can see Grady can
influence the appearance of his _outgoing_ messages is with text_flowed,
and then with his editor.

-- 
Please *no* private copies of mailing list or newsgroup messages.
Rule 420: All persons more than eight miles high to leave the court.

Re: format=flowed (was: If List Reply Fails, Fall Back to Group Reply or Reply)

[Chris Bannister]

On Mon, Sep 07, 2015 at 12:31:58AM -0400, Grady Martin wrote:
> On 2015年09月07日 13時39分, Cameron Simpson wrote:
> >Hmm. I was going to complain about your reflow_*
> >settings (even though the defaults are to reflow
> >at 78 columns), but I see that they are not
> >properly obeyed for me either. Grady's message
> >wraps at my terminal width, even though I have
> >just set reflow_wrap to 40 as a test.
> 
> The reflow_wrap setting does not seem to affect messages for me, either, 
> despite reflow_text being set.  This could be a problem, as the ideal display 
> width of lines is a matter of personal opinion, and people's opinions differ. 
>  Personally, I do not like wasted screen space and have set reflow_wrap to 0. 
>  The problem is that Patrick, for example, would probably like a reflow_wrap 
> value of 80 and yet setting it to 80 does nothing.
> 
> In the spirit of experimentation...
> 
> On 2015年09月07日 13時39分, Cameron Simpson wrote:
> >Hmm. I was going to complain about your reflow_* settings (even though the 
> >defaults are to reflow at 78 columns), but I see that they are not properly 
> >obeyed for me either. Grady's message wraps at my terminal width, even 
> >though I have just set reflow_wrap to 40 as a test.
> 

I certainly know which is easier to read. If it's hard to read most
people don't bother, and if you are looking for help then that can be
very problematic. Of course, it's the OP's choice how they format their
mail.

-- 
"If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people
who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the 
oppressing." --- Malcolm X

Re: format=flowed (was: If List Reply Fails, Fall Back to Group Reply or Reply)

[Patrick Shanahan]

* Cameron Simpson  [09-06-15 23:51]:
> On 06Sep2015 22:54, Patrick Shanahan  wrote:
 [...]
> >Most certainly, longer lines than 80 chars.
> 
> Hmm. I was going to complain about your reflow_* settings (even though the
> defaults are to reflow at 78 columns), but I see that they are not properly
> obeyed for me either. Grady's message wraps at my terminal width, even
> though I have just set reflow_wrap to 40 as a test.
> 
> More interestingly, my reply to you _does_ honour my reflow settings when
> displayed.
> 
> This is just weird.
> 
> More testing needed...

When so doubt or question exists, there is always that ancient document,
man pages.

re: wrap
  set wrap=78
  set smart_wrap
  set reflow_wrap

Nothing weird except habit :)
-- 
(paka)Patrick Shanahan   Plainfield, Indiana, USA  @ptilopteri
http://en.opensuse.orgopenSUSE Community Memberfacebook/ptilopteri
http://wahoo.no-ip.orgPhoto Album: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/gallery2
Registered Linux User #207535@ http://linuxcounter.net

Re: format=flowed (was: If List Reply Fails, Fall Back to Group Reply or Reply)

[Cameron Simpson]

On 07Sep2015 00:31, Grady Martin <sunnycemet...@gmail.com> wrote:

On 2015年09月07日 13時39分, Cameron Simpson wrote:

Hmm. I was going to complain about your reflow_*
settings (even though the defaults are to reflow
at 78 columns), but I see that they are not
properly obeyed for me either. Grady's message
wraps at my terminal width, even though I have
just set reflow_wrap to 40 as a test.


The reflow_wrap setting does not seem to affect messages for me, either, 
despite reflow_text being set.  This could be a problem, as the ideal display 
width of lines is a matter of personal opinion, and people's opinions differ.  
Personally, I do not like wasted screen space and have set reflow_wrap to 0.  
The problem is that Patrick, for example, would probably like a reflow_wrap 
value of 80 and yet setting it to 80 does nothing.


I've just been rereading RFC3676, which specifies the format=flowed format. It 
has these juicy statements in section 4.1:


 If the line ends in a space, the line is flowed. 
 Otherwise it is fixed.


and:

 A series of one or more flowed lines followed by one fixed line is considered 
 a paragraph, and MAY be flowed (wrapped and unwrapped) as appropriate on 
 display and in the construction of new messages (see Section 4.5).


The salient difference between my messages (which reflow to the reflow_wrap 
value) and yours (which do not, and are simply folded at the display width) is 
that your messages have every paragraph as a single line. By the above 
definitions, that is a fixed line which should not be reflowed.


What you need to do is edit in a mode that produces flowed paragraphs. I'm 
using a slightly annoying vim setting that does most of this, and compose 
messages with "set editor=vim-flowed", where vim-flowed is this:


 https://bitbucket.org/cameron_simpson/css/src/tip/bin/vim-flowed

The upshot is that my paragraphs _are_ multiline, with trailing spaces. And 
thus get reflowed.


Yours are "fixed", and mutt (correctly) tries to not reflow them. (As you might 
wish it to with code snippets or CSV file lines etc.)


Cheers,
Cameron Simpson <c...@zip.com.au>

Re: format=flowed (was: If List Reply Fails, Fall Back to Group Reply or Reply)

[Patrick Shanahan]

* Cameron Simpson <c...@zip.com.au> [09-06-15 22:41]:
> On 06Sep2015 21:38, Patrick Shanahan <p...@opensuse.org> wrote:
> >* Grady Martin <sunnycemet...@gmail.com> [09-06-15 21:32]:
> >>Hello, fellow puppies.  The mutt mailing list is magical.  Executing a
> >>regular  results in a prompt that confirms the recipient (list or
> >>sender).
> [...]
> >
> >line wrapping would really be nice.
> 
> His message was format=flowed, and the lines wrapped nicely on my mutt
> display here. Is there something specific wrong?

Most certainly, longer lines than 80 chars.  
-- 
(paka)Patrick Shanahan   Plainfield, Indiana, USA  @ptilopteri
http://en.opensuse.orgopenSUSE Community Memberfacebook/ptilopteri
http://wahoo.no-ip.orgPhoto Album: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/gallery2
Registered Linux User #207535@ http://linuxcounter.net

Re: format=flowed (was: If List Reply Fails, Fall Back to Group Reply or Reply)

[Ian Zimmerman]

On 2015-09-07 13:39 +1000, Cameron Simpson wrote:

> Hmm. I was going to complain about your reflow_* settings (even
> though the defaults are to reflow at 78 columns), but I see that they
> are not properly obeyed for me either. Grady's message wraps at my
> terminal width, even though I have just set reflow_wrap to 40 as a
> test.
>
> More interestingly, my reply to you _does_ honour my reflow settings
> when displayed.

Encoding.  It is not obeyed for QP parts, in my experience.

-- 
Please *no* private copies of mailing list or newsgroup messages.
Rule 420: All persons more than eight miles high to leave the court.

Re: format=flowed (was: If List Reply Fails, Fall Back to Group Reply or Reply)

[Grady Martin]

On 2015年09月07日 13時39分, Cameron Simpson wrote:

Hmm. I was going to complain about your reflow_*
settings (even though the defaults are to reflow
at 78 columns), but I see that they are not
properly obeyed for me either. Grady's message
wraps at my terminal width, even though I have
just set reflow_wrap to 40 as a test.


The reflow_wrap setting does not seem to affect messages for me, either, 
despite reflow_text being set.  This could be a problem, as the ideal display 
width of lines is a matter of personal opinion, and people's opinions differ.  
Personally, I do not like wasted screen space and have set reflow_wrap to 0.  
The problem is that Patrick, for example, would probably like a reflow_wrap 
value of 80 and yet setting it to 80 does nothing.

In the spirit of experimentation...

On 2015年09月07日 13時39分, Cameron Simpson wrote:

Hmm. I was going to complain about your reflow_* settings (even though the 
defaults are to reflow at 78 columns), but I see that they are not properly 
obeyed for me either. Grady's message wraps at my terminal width, even though I 
have just set reflow_wrap to 40 as a test.


Mutt 1.5.24 (2015-08-30)

Re: format=flowed (was: If List Reply Fails, Fall Back to Group Reply or Reply)

[Cameron Simpson]

On 06Sep2015 22:54, Patrick Shanahan <p...@opensuse.org> wrote:

* Cameron Simpson <c...@zip.com.au> [09-06-15 22:41]:

On 06Sep2015 21:38, Patrick Shanahan <p...@opensuse.org> wrote:
>* Grady Martin <sunnycemet...@gmail.com> [09-06-15 21:32]:
>>Hello, fellow puppies.  The mutt mailing list is magical.  Executing a
>>regular  results in a prompt that confirms the recipient (list or
>>sender).
[...]
>
>line wrapping would really be nice.

His message was format=flowed, and the lines wrapped nicely on my mutt
display here. Is there something specific wrong?


Most certainly, longer lines than 80 chars.


Hmm. I was going to complain about your reflow_* settings (even though the 
defaults are to reflow at 78 columns), but I see that they are not properly 
obeyed for me either. Grady's message wraps at my terminal width, even though I 
have just set reflow_wrap to 40 as a test.


More interestingly, my reply to you _does_ honour my reflow settings when 
displayed.


This is just weird.

More testing needed...

Cheers,
Cameron Simpson <c...@zip.com.au>

format=flowed (was: If List Reply Fails, Fall Back to Group Reply or Reply)

[Cameron Simpson]

On 06Sep2015 21:38, Patrick Shanahan <p...@opensuse.org> wrote:

* Grady Martin <sunnycemet...@gmail.com> [09-06-15 21:32]:

Hello, fellow puppies.  The mutt mailing list is magical.  Executing a
regular  results in a prompt that confirms the recipient (list or
sender).

[...]


line wrapping would really be nice.


His message was format=flowed, and the lines wrapped nicely on my mutt display 
here. Is there something specific wrong?


Cheers,
Cameron Simpson <c...@zip.com.au>

Re: Format flowed equals no space in depth 1

[Chris Bannister]

On Fri, Sep 19, 2014 at 04:33:19PM -0500, Derek Martin wrote:
 You're focused on ONE MINISCULE ASPECT of the problem, which is a
 negligible fraction of the total.  As such, your points don't have any
 real impact on the discussion.  Come back when you're:
 
  - Not ever getting your food from grocery stores/restaurants, AND
  - Building everything you use from parts, AND
  - Fabricating all of those parts from raw resources, AND
  - Doing your own taxes, AND
  - Building your home yourself from materials, AND
  - Doing all home maintenance/upgrades yourself, AND
  - Meeting all your healthcare needs without doctors, AND
  - providing your own means of transportation as above, AND
  - Acting in your own films, filmed with cameras you built yourself, AND
  - ...  (so many other things that we do regularly)

Wow!  Of course, no man is an island etc. etc.

I was only responding to the misleading remark:

 ... and without specialization it does not work, period.
That's why you don't build your own home, grow/raise/kill your own food
... 

It is being done by many people. 

 Get the point yet?  You simply can't do all that stuff yourself.

Of course not. 

 Specialization is what makes virtually every aspect of modern society
 possible.

I'm not disagreeing with you here. :)  You could argue, that there has
always been specialisation --- there will always be *something* you need
from a specialist. 

-- 
If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people
who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the 
oppressing. --- Malcolm X

Re: Format flowed equals no space in depth 1

[Chris Bannister]

On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 12:24:31PM -0500, Derek Martin wrote:
 The world has become complicated, and without specialization it does
 not work, period.  That's why you don't build your own home,
 grow/raise/kill your own food ...

That sounds like corporate propaganda to me - i.e. they don't want you
to. But believe me it is possible and doable.

Just a quick example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Cottage

Don't let the food¹ companies pull the wool over your ears.

¹ I use the term 'food' very loosely here. 

It's *so* easy to grow your own vegetables.

-- 
If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people
who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the 
oppressing. --- Malcolm X

Re: Format flowed equals no space in depth 1

[Derek Martin]

On Fri, Sep 19, 2014 at 07:09:22PM +1200, Chris Bannister wrote:
 It's *so* easy to grow your own vegetables.

No one said it was hard... most of the things you pay someone else to
do aren't (though some definitely are).  The complexity comes from the
sheer number of things, which if you had to do each one yourself, from
scratch, and including learning how to do them, would be overwhelming.
There simply isn't enough time in the day for you to do it all
yourself.  Even things that are easy to do take time to learn how.

Again, that's unless you choose to live an extremely simple life, and
not participate in modern society.  Which you can do... most people
just wouldn't ever chose that.

-- 
Derek D. Martinhttp://www.pizzashack.org/   GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02
-=-=-=-=-
This message is posted from an invalid address.  Replying to it will result in
undeliverable mail due to spam prevention.  Sorry for the inconvenience.



pgpy7Eegdu0QE.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Re: Format flowed equals no space in depth 1

[Chris Bannister]

On Fri, Sep 19, 2014 at 11:05:50AM -0500, Derek Martin wrote:
 On Fri, Sep 19, 2014 at 07:09:22PM +1200, Chris Bannister wrote:
  It's *so* easy to grow your own vegetables.
 
 No one said it was hard... most of the things you pay someone else to
 do aren't (though some definitely are).  

Well, if you can afford your own Gardener all the better. 

 The complexity comes from the
 sheer number of things, which if you had to do each one yourself, from
 scratch, and including learning how to do them, would be overwhelming.
 There simply isn't enough time in the day for you to do it all
 yourself.  Even things that are easy to do take time to learn how.

Some people actually do it as a hobby, and you make it sound so much
harder than it really is. The real problem is having the land, but a
surprising amount can still be grown in window boxes or 'grow boxes'.

 Again, that's unless you choose to live an extremely simple life, and
 not participate in modern society.  Which you can do... most people
 just wouldn't ever chose that.

I would consider ordering take aways/fast food the 'simple' life.

-- 
If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people
who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the 
oppressing. --- Malcolm X

Re: Format flowed equals no space in depth 1

[David Champion]

* On 17 Sep 2014, Ed Blackman wrote: 
 
 I'm not one of the developers of Mutt, nor am I some representative of all
 of Mutt's users.  However, it seems to me that the devs and at least most of
 the users like things as they are, such that you need to know a good bit
 about email to use Mutt.  Otherwise they would be developing changes[1] or
 switching to another email client.
 
 That being the case, I don't know that passionate rants on the mailing list
 are going to do much good.  The people on this list have self-selected to be
 users of a email tool that requires you to know a bit about email internals
 to use it, and have further self-selected to join a list to converse and
 swap tips about that editor with other like-minded people.  Making things
 easier for non-geeks, when non-geeks are not likely to want to use mutt for
 many other reasons other than difficulties writing flowed or HTML text,
 doesn't seem to be a priority.

We're not closed to further development on mutt, but it takes times that
for the most part we don't have.  Mutt probably is not feature-complete,
but it's close, and we're evidently well into the long tail of
diminishing returns.  Personally, mutt annoys me in very few ways, and
I'm pretty tolerant of those that remain.  Addressing these relatively
minor issues rarely claims my time.  If it tempts yours, patches are
welcome.

I know what the response to that will be: but the maintainers never
respond to patches!  You're right.  What's more difficult than
getting patches is finding consensus on the right reaction when the
problem being addressed is one that we (maintainers) don't experience
personally.  I don't want to transmogrify this thread into another how
do we fix mutt development thread -- I don't know that everyone of
note is paying attention.  But I do want to make the comment that for
me, it's not that I like things as they are so much as that I don't
know what the right solution to this problem is, and I'm afraid I don't
have time right now for reading the RFC, trying to sketch it out, and
evaluating the various patches' solutions, etc.  Perhaps I'm a bad
maintainer, I'll accept that, but there it is.  So what's really useful
to maintainers (I think) is some solid discussion of the solutions
proposed, and a community recommendation.

I haven't read this thread through completely because it's a bit off
course, but I've picked up on two implemented solutions on this topic:
a VVV patch and a Gary Johnson patch.  Can someone discuss how they
differ, whether they conflict, whether either causes problems, whether
they can or should be merged, etc?  Do they solve the problem raised in
this thread, work around it, are they tangential?

We need this kind of help to move ahead on something.

-- 
David Champion • d...@bikeshed.us


pgp8SU503HXzn.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Re: Format flowed equals no space in depth 1

[Will Yardley]

On Fri, Sep 19, 2014 at 11:57:34AM -0500, David Champion wrote:
 I haven't read this thread through completely because it's a bit off
 course, but I've picked up on two implemented solutions on this topic:
 a VVV patch and a Gary Johnson patch.  Can someone discuss how they
 differ, whether they conflict, whether either causes problems, whether
 they can or should be merged, etc?

I don't think GJ's patch will apply against current dev. The
behavior was pretty simple, controlled with a single variable.

I had a version that could apply up to maybe 1.5.12 or a bit later. His
description from the man page entry:

   stuff_all_quoted

   When set, mutt will space-stuff all non-empty quoted lines in
   displayed and generated text/plain; format=flowed
   attachments, as allowed by RFC 2646.  This makes the quoting
   of format=flowed text easier to read and more consistent with
   the quoting style traditionally used for format=fixed text.
   When unset, mutt will space-stuff quoted lines only as
   required by RFC 2646.

AFAICT, the patch used in FreeBSD (vvv one) is pretty similar.
There are two configurable variables:

   quote_empty
   Type: boolean
   Default: yes

   Controls  whether  or  not  empty  lines  will  be quoted
   using indent_string.

   quote_quoted
   Type: boolean
   Default: no

   Controls how quoted lines will be  quoted.  If set,  one
   quote character  will  be added to the end of existing
   prefix.  Other- wise, quoted lines will be prepended by
   indent_string.

I'm not sure if the behavior in terms of adding spaces to lines other
than the most recent quote level is different, but overall, I think they
behave in roughly the same way, other than the additional $quote_empty
param, which I don't think GJ's patch messed with at all (the docs
specifically only mention non-empty quoted lines)

One other thing that might make more sense than having it be a separate
configuration option is having the behavior simply vary depending on
whether $text_flowed is set, similar to how $indent_string is ignored if
$text_flowed is set. IMHO, that would give the behavior that most people
expect with the least amount of fuss / tweaking.

Agree with a lot of what you said in your post; I think at some point,
we need to just get any serious bugs squashed and get a 1.6 out... at
this point, most software vendors are shipping 1.5.x anyway.

w

Re: Format flowed equals no space in depth 1

[Will Yardley]

ps - These are the two versions of the gj one I have - one might have
been tweaked by me to apply to a later version. It's pretty small; I
imagine someone who knows the mutt code-base could pretty easily figure
out how to make it apply to current.

w

--- PATCHES.orig2003-04-15 06:18:34.0 -0700
+++ PATCHES 2003-12-31 00:13:58.0 -0800
@@ -1,0 +1 @@
+patch-1.5.5.1.gj.stuff_all_quoted.2
--- handler.c.orig  2003-11-05 01:41:31.0 -0800
+++ handler.c   2004-02-23 03:21:10.0 -0800
@@ -919,9 +919,6 @@
 
 static void flowed_stuff (STATE *s, char *cont, int level)
 {
-  if (!option (OPTTEXTFLOWED)  !(s-flags  M_DISPLAY))
-return;
-
   if (s-flags  M_DISPLAY)
   {
 /* 
@@ -931,7 +928,15 @@
  */
 if (*cont  !level  !mutt_strcmp (Pager, builtin)  
flowed_maybe_quoted (cont))
   state_puts (\033[0m,s);
+
+if (*cont  level  option (OPTSTUFFALLQUOTED))
+  state_putc (' ', s);
   }
+  else if (option (OPTSTUFFALLQUOTED)  *cont 
+  ((s-prefix  s-prefix[strlen(s-prefix) - 1] == ' ') ? level - 1 
: level))
+state_putc (' ', s);
+  else if (!option (OPTTEXTFLOWED))
+return;
   else if ((!(s-flags  M_PRINTING))  
   ((*cont == ' ') || (*cont == '') || (!level  !mutt_strncmp (cont, 
From , 5
 state_putc (' ', s);
--- init.h.orig 2003-11-05 01:41:32.0 -0800
+++ init.h  2004-01-15 23:51:31.0 -0800
@@ -2492,6 +2492,16 @@
   ** personal mailbox where you might have several unrelated messages with
   ** the subject ``hi'' which will get grouped together.
   */
+  { stuff_all_quoted, DT_BOOL, R_NONE, OPTSTUFFALLQUOTED, 0 },
+  /*
+  ** .pp
+  ** When set, mutt will space-stuff all non-empty quoted lines in
+  ** displayed and generated text/plain; format=flowed attachments, as
+  ** allowed by RFC 2646.  This makes the quoting of format=flowed text
+  ** easier to read and more consistent with the quoting style
+  ** traditionally used for format=fixed text.  When unset, mutt will
+  ** space-stuff quoted lines only as required by RFC 2646.
+  */
   { suspend, DT_BOOL, R_NONE, OPTSUSPEND, 1 },
   /*
   ** .pp
--- mutt.h.orig 2003-11-05 01:41:32.0 -0800
+++ mutt.h  2003-12-30 16:56:43.0 -0800
@@ -406,6 +406,7 @@
   OPTSTATUSONTOP,
   OPTSTRICTTHREADS,
   OPTSUSPEND,
+  OPTSTUFFALLQUOTED,
   OPTTEXTFLOWED,
   OPTTHOROUGHSRC,
   OPTTHREADRECEIVED,
diff -u mutt-1.5.12/PATCHES mutt-1.5.12.patched/PATCHES
--- mutt-1.5.12/PATCHES 2006-07-14 11:12:47.0 -0700
+++ mutt-1.5.12.patched/PATCHES 2006-08-07 23:20:25.0 -0700
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+patch-1.5.5.1.gj.stuff_all_quoted.2
Common subdirectories: mutt-1.5.12/contrib and mutt-1.5.12.patched/contrib
Common subdirectories: mutt-1.5.12/doc and mutt-1.5.12.patched/doc
diff -u mutt-1.5.12/handler.c mutt-1.5.12.patched/handler.c
--- mutt-1.5.12/handler.c   2005-12-20 01:36:02.0 -0800
+++ mutt-1.5.12.patched/handler.c   2006-08-07 23:20:25.0 -0700
@@ -924,9 +924,6 @@
 
 static void flowed_stuff (STATE *s, char *cont, int level)
 {
-  if (!option (OPTTEXTFLOWED)  !(s-flags  M_DISPLAY))
-return;
-
   if (s-flags  M_DISPLAY)
   {
 /* 
@@ -936,7 +933,15 @@
  */
 if (*cont  !level  !mutt_strcmp (Pager, builtin)  
flowed_maybe_quoted (cont))
   state_puts (\033[0m,s);
+
+if (*cont  level  option (OPTSTUFFALLQUOTED))
+  state_putc (' ', s);
   }
+  else if (option (OPTSTUFFALLQUOTED)  *cont 
+  ((s-prefix  s-prefix[strlen(s-prefix) - 1] == ' ') ? level - 1 
: level))
+state_putc (' ', s);
+  else if (!option (OPTTEXTFLOWED))
+return;
   else if ((!(s-flags  M_PRINTING))  
   ((*cont == ' ') || (*cont == '') || (!level  !mutt_strncmp (cont, 
From , 5
 state_putc (' ', s);
Only in mutt-1.5.12.patched/: handler.c.orig
Common subdirectories: mutt-1.5.12/imap and mutt-1.5.12.patched/imap
diff -u mutt-1.5.12/init.h mutt-1.5.12.patched/init.h
--- mutt-1.5.12/init.h  2006-07-05 01:40:05.0 -0700
+++ mutt-1.5.12.patched/init.h  2006-08-07 23:20:25.0 -0700
@@ -2728,6 +2728,16 @@
   ** ``$$sort_re'' for a less drastic way of controlling this
   ** behaviour.
   */
+  { stuff_all_quoted, DT_BOOL, R_NONE, OPTSTUFFALLQUOTED, 0 },
+  /*
+  ** .pp
+  ** When set, mutt will space-stuff all non-empty quoted lines in
+  ** displayed and generated text/plain; format=flowed attachments, as
+  ** allowed by RFC 2646.  This makes the quoting of format=flowed text
+  ** easier to read and more consistent with the quoting style
+  ** traditionally used for format=fixed text.  When unset, mutt will
+  ** space-stuff quoted lines only as required by RFC 2646.
+  */
   { suspend, DT_BOOL, R_NONE, OPTSUSPEND, 1 },
   /*
   ** .pp
Only in mutt-1.5.12.patched/: init.h.orig
Common subdirectories: mutt-1.5.12/intl and mutt-1.5.12.patched/intl
Common subdirectories: mutt-1.5.12/m4 and mutt-1.5.12.patched/m4
diff -u mutt-1.5.12/mutt.h mutt-1.5.12.patched/mutt.h
--- mutt

Re: Format flowed equals no space in depth 1

[Derek Martin]

Chris,

On Sat, Sep 20, 2014 at 04:57:15AM +1200, Chris Bannister wrote:
 On Fri, Sep 19, 2014 at 11:05:50AM -0500, Derek Martin wrote:
  On Fri, Sep 19, 2014 at 07:09:22PM +1200, Chris Bannister wrote:
   It's *so* easy to grow your own vegetables.
  
  No one said it was hard... most of the things you pay someone else to
  do aren't (though some definitely are).  
 
 Well, if you can afford your own Gardener all the better. 

You're focused on ONE MINISCULE ASPECT of the problem, which is a
negligible fraction of the total.  As such, your points don't have any
real impact on the discussion.  Come back when you're:

 - Not ever getting your food from grocery stores/restaurants, AND
 - Building everything you use from parts, AND
 - Fabricating all of those parts from raw resources, AND
 - Doing your own taxes, AND
 - Building your home yourself from materials, AND
 - Doing all home maintenance/upgrades yourself, AND
 - Meeting all your healthcare needs without doctors, AND
 - providing your own means of transportation as above, AND
 - Acting in your own films, filmed with cameras you built yourself, AND
 - ...  (so many other things that we do regularly)

Get the point yet?  You simply can't do all that stuff yourself.
Specialization is what makes virtually every aspect of modern society
possible.  The only way to avoid specialization is to avoid all of
those things entirely, live in a hut and live off the land, and decide
that when you get a potentially fatal disease you are done. 

In the modern world, you need to make decisions about which of those
things to do yourself, and pay people to do the rest of them.  That's
what specialization IS.  For the vast majority of e-mail users, making
e-mail work without having to think about how it works is one of those
items that they choose to pay somone else to do for them.


 I would consider ordering take aways/fast food the 'simple' life.

It's simple in its way, but you've missed the point.  It's very much a
part of the specialization I'm talking about, and as such it fails the
test above.

-- 
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-=-=-=-=-
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Re: Format flowed equals no space in depth 1

[Will Yardley]

On Fri, Sep 19, 2014 at 04:33:19PM -0500, Derek Martin wrote:
 On Sat, Sep 20, 2014 at 04:57:15AM +1200, Chris Bannister wrote:
  On Fri, Sep 19, 2014 at 11:05:50AM -0500, Derek Martin wrote:
   On Fri, Sep 19, 2014 at 07:09:22PM +1200, Chris Bannister wrote:
It's *so* easy to grow your own vegetables.

   No one said it was hard... most of the things you pay someone else
   to do aren't (though some definitely are).  
 
  Well, if you can afford your own Gardener all the better. 
 
 You're focused on ONE MINISCULE ASPECT of the problem, which is a
 negligible fraction of the total.  As such, your points don't have any
 real impact on the discussion.  Come back when you're:

  - Not ever getting your food from grocery stores/restaurants, AND
[...]
Agreed.

We have a vegetable garden, and it involves quite a bit of time (and
some amount of money as well). With two raised beds, we do produce some
useful and delicious vegetables, but we are nowhere near at the point
where we could live off of food we produce year-roung. And we live in
California, with a fairly temperate climate year-round, and own a house
with a backyard, which is not the case for a lot of folks.

I think there is a middle ground between supporting huge agribusiness
and growing / producing / foraging all of your own food, which is
difficult or impossible for many.

w

Re: Format flowed equals no space in depth 1

[Chris Bannister]

On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 03:36:26PM -0400, Patrice Levesque wrote:
 roads; red lights, yield signs, school buses and all.

Please, what is a yield sign? Is that what the rest of the world would
call a stop sign, or a give way sign?

-- 
If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people
who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the 
oppressing. --- Malcolm X

Re: Format flowed equals no space in depth 1

[Patrick Shanahan]

* Chris Bannister cbannis...@slingshot.co.nz [09-17-14 09:33]:
 On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 03:36:26PM -0400, Patrice Levesque wrote:
  roads; red lights, yield signs, school buses and all.
 
 Please, what is a yield sign? Is that what the rest of the world would
 call a stop sign, or a give way sign?

yield = allow others right-of-way

-- 
(paka)Patrick Shanahan   Plainfield, Indiana, USA  @ptilopteri
http://en.opensuse.orgopenSUSE Community Memberfacebook/ptilopteri
http://wahoo.no-ip.orgPhoto Album: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/gallery2
Registered Linux User #207535@ http://linuxcounter.net

Re: Format flowed equals no space in depth 1

[Derek Martin]

On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 03:36:26PM -0400, Patrice Levesque wrote:
  The message is that not everyone has time to become an expert in how
  e-mail works fundamentally, and not everyone should.  In fact, just
  about no one should.  This is what specialization is all about, and
  like it or not our society has become extremely specialized.
 
 No, I'm sorry, the specialization idea does not float.  

Of course it does.  If someone can do X once, thereby enabling
everyone else to do Y efficiently without being required to understand
X, that is very obviously what should happen.  Under those
circumstances, forcing everyone to understand X in order to do Y is
horribly inefficient, EXCEPT when X is fundamental knowledge that has
general applicability (like arithmetic, for example).  Forcing that
requires the world do monumental wasted work, and enables many people
to get it wrong, in entirely different ways.  That's sheer stupidity.

The world has become complicated, and without specialization it does
not work, period.  That's why you don't build your own home,
grow/raise/kill your own food, build your own car (from the raw
resources)... AND all of the things you do at work, etc..  You can
maybe do some of those things, but there's no practical way you can do
everything you need done in your life--unless you live on an island
that produces adequate food for you to live on, very simply.
Otherwise, specialization is ESSENTIAL.

 E-mail has become as popular as car driving.  

But learning how it works fundamentally hasn't.  That's why the vast
majority of e-mail users use either Outlook or Firefox.  It does what
they need and they don't have to care about the details; the learning
curve is not steep and requires nearly zero specialized knowledge.
They know they need e-mail, and they DO NOT CARE how it works.  Nor
should they.  Correspondence is a simple, every-day part of life, and
sending e-mail should be as easy as writing your message on paper.
Particularly since, as I've said, there's no technological reason it
can not be.

I'm not suggesting Mutt should be just like Outlook or Firefox--it
serves a different niche (but it is indeed a niche).  However I do
think that it's hard to argue convincingly that Mutt users would not
universally benefit if it handled more of the esoteric details for
them (at least by default, still allowing advanced users to do what
they want).  For some of that, closer integration of the pieces is
going to be required, practically speaking.

-- 
Derek D. Martinhttp://www.pizzashack.org/   GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02
-=-=-=-=-
This message is posted from an invalid address.  Replying to it will result in
undeliverable mail due to spam prevention.  Sorry for the inconvenience.



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Re: Format flowed equals no space in depth 1

[Will Yardley]

On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 12:24:31PM -0500, Derek Martin wrote:
 On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 03:36:26PM -0400, Patrice Levesque wrote:

  E-mail has become as popular as car driving.  
 
 But learning how it works fundamentally hasn't.  That's why the vast
 majority of e-mail users use either Outlook or Firefox.  It does what
 they need and they don't have to care about the details; the learning
 curve is not steep and requires nearly zero specialized knowledge.
 They know they need e-mail, and they DO NOT CARE how it works.  Nor
 should they.  Correspondence is a simple, every-day part of life, and
 sending e-mail should be as easy as writing your message on paper.

I think also, even though most people have email, and use it for
receiving bills, automated notifications, etc., and possibly for work
communications, email is becoming less valued for personal
correspondence. I send and receive fewer and fewer non-work related
emails, largely because most of my friends and family prefer to
communicate by text message, IM, Facebook, etc. And while there are
still some mailing lists around, a lot of online discussion has moved
from email and USENET to web-based forums, or hybrid systems like Google
Groups.

While I have some reservations about these other modes of communication
in many cases, the most important thing is being able to communicate
with the people you care about - the exact mode of communication, or
whether that person formats things correctly, are largely secondary.

In any event, *having* an email address is very common, but I think
there's actually some movement away from it in terms of people actually
writing email messages.

w

Re: Format flowed equals no space in depth 1

[Ed Blackman]

On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 12:24:31PM -0500, Derek Martin wrote:

I'm not suggesting Mutt should be just like Outlook or Firefox--it
serves a different niche (but it is indeed a niche).  However I do
think that it's hard to argue convincingly that Mutt users would not
universally benefit if it handled more of the esoteric details for
them (at least by default, still allowing advanced users to do what
they want).  For some of that, closer integration of the pieces is
going to be required, practically speaking.


I'm not one of the developers of Mutt, nor am I some representative of 
all of Mutt's users.  However, it seems to me that the devs and at least 
most of the users like things as they are, such that you need to know a 
good bit about email to use Mutt.  Otherwise they would be developing 
changes[1] or switching to another email client.


That being the case, I don't know that passionate rants on the mailing 
list are going to do much good.  The people on this list have 
self-selected to be users of a email tool that requires you to know a 
bit about email internals to use it, and have further self-selected to 
join a list to converse and swap tips about that editor with other 
like-minded people.  Making things easier for non-geeks, when non-geeks 
are not likely to want to use mutt for many other reasons other than 
difficulties writing flowed or HTML text, doesn't seem to be a priority.


[1] Quick googling finds this message suggesting a feature freeze for 
1.6: http://markmail.org/message/pdqwhg277u7lwzer  Note that we recently 
passed the 8th anniversary.


--
Ed Blackman


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Description: Digital signature

Re: Format flowed equals no space in depth 1

[Derek Martin]

Ed,

On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 02:33:21PM -0400, Ed Blackman wrote:
 I'm not one of the developers of Mutt, nor am I some representative
 of all of Mutt's users.  However, it seems to me that the devs and
 at least most of the users like things as they are, such that you
 need to know a good bit about email to use Mutt.  Otherwise they
 would be developing changes[1] or switching to another email client.

I'm well aware, I'm one of those people.  I've been here for the
better part of 20 years ($#@!).  Go on, search the archives, you will
find me there. :)

 That being the case, I don't know that passionate rants on the
 mailing list are going to do much good.  

You misunderstand my purpose.  And while it may seem that way, I am
not ranting.

This thread arose because of what one user perceived as a flaw in the
way Mutt handles a standard feature of e-mail clients: flowed text
formatting.  What I have been doing, mostly, was refuting the notions
that 1. there is no flaw, and that 2. tighter integration between
editor and Mutt is not a good solution, not only to that problem, but
to others (there was a third thing, which I'll get to momentarily).
Those arguments were attacked, and I defended them.  You are free to
decide that Mutt is fine the way it is as a matter of your personal
preference, but from a technical standpoint, my arguments are correct.
New(ish) users often post asking for better solutions to some of the
problems caused by Mutt's obsolesence, only to be told that Mutt's way
is the One True Way and they are wrong for asking.  But that is sheer
idiocy.  [I exaggerate the situation slightly. ;-)] When code can
accomplish what dozens or hundreds or thousands of people must do
manually, that's usually the right answer... assuming you can find
someone to do the coding (and that's the trick).

 Making things easier for non-geeks, when non-geeks are not likely to
 want to use mutt for many other reasons other than difficulties
 writing flowed or HTML text, doesn't seem to be a priority.

Making things easier for non-geeks also makes them easier for geeks.
If they can be made easier (or more fluid/consistent/efficient or
whatever), how is that EVER a bad thing, regardless of how you
classify yourself?

 [1] Quick googling finds this message suggesting a feature freeze
 for 1.6: http://markmail.org/message/pdqwhg277u7lwzer  Note that we
 recently passed the 8th anniversary.

Indeed.  This brings me to the third thing that my posts were sort of
hinting at, without actually saying it:  Mutt is basically done.  If
you don't like how it does what it does, you should probably use
something else... or at least be prepared to hack together a fix of
your own, which you will most likely have to maintain forever.

-- 
Derek D. Martinhttp://www.pizzashack.org/   GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02
-=-=-=-=-
This message is posted from an invalid address.  Replying to it will result in
undeliverable mail due to spam prevention.  Sorry for the inconvenience.



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Re: Format flowed equals no space in depth 1

[Mark Filipak]

On 2014/9/17 3:40 PM, Derek Martin wrote:
-a lot of very sensible stuff, which I've snipped off-

Dear Derek,

I'd like to briefly correspond with you. I believe my address is part of
this message's message headers. If it strikes your fancy, would you
kindly drop me a line?

Ciao - Mark Filipak.

Re: Format flowed equals no space in depth 1

[Erik Christiansen]

On 15.09.14 09:29, Will Yardley wrote:
 Yes, but if you forget to do this, or manually mangle a line, you could
 end up generating non-compliant text.
 
 My point isn't that there aren't editors that are capable of generating
 the text correctly, but that it's difficult to mutt to know for sure
 that you have done so.

On 15.09.14 14:48, Derek Martin wrote:
 You had to understand how it works, and configure your editor to do it
 right. Most users do not want to do that, and they should not have to.

IIUC, the message is that those users not only do not care to take care
with what they present to the reader, they just don't care. That has its
price.

Now I understand why Google was in such a hurry to develop and certify
self-driving cars. Humanity's sense of entitlement to be too stupid to
move from point A to point B without a supervising agency to exercise a
Duty of Care is reaching critical mass.

It amuses me when apparently capable adults blame the tool in their
hands for their own occasional incompetence. Just 'fess up when you
forgot to run the spell checker, to compensate for the fact that you
can't spell worth a damn. is my philosophy.

TBT, I have for some time now taken carelessly reflowed quoted text as a
signal that a post is not worth reading, and so delete it on sight. To
date I have not noticed any impact on my enjoyment of the thread in
which they appear, and it saves time which can be spent on posts from
the thoughtful majority who realise that their post must buy readership.

Mind you, failure to capitalise sentence starts is another reliable
Delete instead of reading trigger, I find. Not so much because the
carelessness makes reading harder, as because those posts almost
invariably lack substantial content.

When seeking a technological fix for every human skill deficiency, I'm
reminded of:

Naeser's Law:
   You can make it foolproof, but you can't make it damnfoolproof.


Erik

-- 
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; 
and I'm not sure about the universe.- Albert Einstein

Re: Format flowed equals no space in depth 1

[Will Yardley]

On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 08:11:57PM +1000, Erik Christiansen wrote:
 On 15.09.14 09:29, Will Yardley wrote:
  Yes, but if you forget to do this, or manually mangle a line, you could
  end up generating non-compliant text.
  
  My point isn't that there aren't editors that are capable of generating
  the text correctly, but that it's difficult to mutt to know for sure
  that you have done so.
 
 On 15.09.14 14:48, Derek Martin wrote:
  You had to understand how it works, and configure your editor to do it
  right. Most users do not want to do that, and they should not have to.
 
 IIUC, the message is that those users not only do not care to take care
 with what they present to the reader, they just don't care. That has its
 price.
[...]
 It amuses me when apparently capable adults blame the tool in their
 hands for their own occasional incompetence.

I don't think that not understanding rfc2646 and implementing it
precisely is really something that humans are well suited for. I've
looked through it and read it, and I'm sure I still couldn't craft a
compliant message (including trailing spaces in the right place,
space-stuffing certain lines, etc.).

w

Re: Format flowed equals no space in depth 1

[Mark Filipak]

=== Lurk-Mode OFF ===

Duck and cover!

=== Lurk-Mode ON ===

On 2014/9/15 10:09 AM, Erik Christiansen wrote:
 On 14.09.14 16:29, Will Yardley wrote:
 The problem, though, is that doing so in a tool like mutt where the
 editor is (by design) completely divorced from the MUA does make it a
 lot more difficult to properly generate flowed text.
 
 Nope, it works fine for me, without effort of any significance. The
 problem of scrambling standard email quoting when reflowing arises
 only when a poster uses an incompetent editor to compose a reply. When I
 reply in-line to a post, and break a quoted paragraph before a sentence,
 and the paragraph rump needs reflowing, then the ordinary gq} command
 respects the quoting, just as insert automatically prepends   to the
 new line.
 
 That's with Vim as Mutt's editor. Doubtless Emacs can do the same.
 (And with gq} mapped to ^W, I just need to think wrap, rather than
 gobbeldygook.)
 
 OK, I haven't tried Vim's continuously active flowed text mode, so
 cannot report on how that handles quoting, but then I don't see the
 point.
 
 Erik
 

Re: Format flowed equals no space in depth 1

[Derek Martin]

On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 08:11:57PM +1000, Erik Christiansen wrote:
 On 15.09.14 14:48, Derek Martin wrote:
  You had to understand how it works, and configure your editor to do it
  right. Most users do not want to do that, and they should not have to.
 
 IIUC, the message is that those users not only do not care to take care
 with what they present to the reader, they just don't care. That has its
 price.

No, WRONG WRONG WRONG.  

Why aren't all construction workers also competent architects or
engineers?  It should not be a requirement to understand the science
behind how a tool works, to use it effectively.  That's a large part
of the point of having a tool in the first place.

The message is that not everyone has time to become an expert in how
e-mail works fundamentally, and not everyone should.  In fact,
just about no one should.  This is what specialization is all about,
and like it or not our society has become extremely specialized.
Specialization is what enables efficiency.  E-mail is a tool to enable
people to collaborate; having to take time to understand the tool
distracts (and detracts) from the focus--the collaboration--which
defeats the purpose of having the tool.

The main problem with Mutt is that it requires very specialized
knowledge to use it well, and A LOT of it.  This is counter to how our
society works, and is extremely bad for efficiency.   [Once set up to
your liking, Mutt makes up for this in other ways, but it's often very
hard to make a good argument that it's better than some other client
that just does it all for you, properly, without you having to think
much about it.]

Most importantly, there are ZERO technological challenges preventing
some person who does understand how all this formatting stuff works to
program it once so that you don't need to understand how it works.
This is much, much better for everyone.  Less to maintain, and the
problem needs to be solved only once (or once per mail client),
instead of once by every person who uses the client.

-- 
Derek D. Martinhttp://www.pizzashack.org/   GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02
-=-=-=-=-
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Re: Format flowed equals no space in depth 1

[Patrice Levesque]

 The message is that not everyone has time to become an expert in how
 e-mail works fundamentally, and not everyone should.  In fact, just
 about no one should.  This is what specialization is all about, and
 like it or not our society has become extremely specialized.

No, I'm sorry, the specialization idea does not float.  E-mail has
become as popular as car driving.  I agree you don't need to know
mechanics nor combustion physics to operate a car.  Nonetheless you must
invest tens of hours to learn how to drive it properly, many of them
only to allow fluid interactions with other drivers, as we all share
roads; red lights, yield signs, school buses and all.

Many people will spend many more hours dealing with e-mail than at the
wheel but hey, they can get away with half-garbage e-mails so why should
they bother?

I mean, what's *so* hard about spending 10 hours once to learn to
properly use something that you'll enjoy every day for the rest of your
life?



-- 
 --|--
|
Patrice Levesque
 http://ptaff.ca/
mutt.wa...@ptaff.ca
|
 --|--
--


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Description: Digital signature

Re: Format flowed equals no space in depth 1

[Erik Christiansen]

On 14.09.14 16:29, Will Yardley wrote:
 The problem, though, is that doing so in a tool like mutt where the
 editor is (by design) completely divorced from the MUA does make it a
 lot more difficult to properly generate flowed text.

Nope, it works fine for me, without effort of any significance. The
problem of scrambling standard email quoting when reflowing arises
only when a poster uses an incompetent editor to compose a reply. When I
reply in-line to a post, and break a quoted paragraph before a sentence,
and the paragraph rump needs reflowing, then the ordinary gq} command
respects the quoting, just as insert automatically prepends   to the
new line.

That's with Vim as Mutt's editor. Doubtless Emacs can do the same.
(And with gq} mapped to ^W, I just need to think wrap, rather than
gobbeldygook.)

OK, I haven't tried Vim's continuously active flowed text mode, so
cannot report on how that handles quoting, but then I don't see the
point.

Erik

-- 
At the Victorian [era] version of the X Factor, the talent show format was
stripped right back to its bare bones. Just six contestants and a stage, each
and every man singing his heart out to impress the judges. While carrying a pig.
http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-28982145- 

Re: Format flowed equals no space in depth 1

[Will Yardley]

On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 12:09:09AM +1000, Erik Christiansen wrote:
 On 14.09.14 16:29, Will Yardley wrote:
  The problem, though, is that doing so in a tool like mutt where the
  editor is (by design) completely divorced from the MUA does make it a
  lot more difficult to properly generate flowed text.
 
 Nope, it works fine for me, without effort of any significance. The
 problem of scrambling standard email quoting when reflowing arises
 only when a poster uses an incompetent editor to compose a reply. When I
 reply in-line to a post, and break a quoted paragraph before a sentence,
 and the paragraph rump needs reflowing, then the ordinary gq} command
 respects the quoting, just as insert automatically prepends   to the
 new line.

Yes, but if you forget to do this, or manually mangle a line, you could
end up generating non-compliant text.

My point isn't that there aren't editors that are capable of generating
the text correctly, but that it's difficult to mutt to know for sure
that you have done so.

w
 

Re: Format flowed equals no space in depth 1

[Derek Martin]

On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 12:09:09AM +1000, Erik Christiansen wrote:
 On 14.09.14 16:29, Will Yardley wrote:
  The problem, though, is that doing so in a tool like mutt where the
  editor is (by design) completely divorced from the MUA does make it a
  lot more difficult to properly generate flowed text.
 
 Nope, it works fine for me, without effort of any significance. 

That's not true.  You had to understand how it works, and configure
your editor to do it right.  Most users do not want to do that, and
they should not have to.  That's what e-mail software is for.

-- 
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Re: Format flowed equals no space in depth 1

[Gary Johnson]

On 2014-09-13, Will Yardley wrote:

 I don't think the stuff_all_quoted patch has been kept up to date.

No, it hasn't.  One reason is that I no longer work at the company
where mutt was my primary mail client and where I regularly received
all sorts of different mail formats including format=flowed, so even
if I was motivated to keep it up to date, I don't have a good way to
test it.  I don't remember the last time I received a format=flowed
message.

Regards,
Gary

Re: Format flowed equals no space in depth 1

[Will Yardley]

On Sat, Sep 13, 2014 at 11:36:28PM -0700, Gary Johnson wrote:
 On 2014-09-13, Will Yardley wrote:
 
  I don't think the stuff_all_quoted patch has been kept up to date.
 
 No, it hasn't.  One reason is that I no longer work at the company
 where mutt was my primary mail client and where I regularly received
 all sorts of different mail formats including format=flowed, so even
 if I was motivated to keep it up to date, I don't have a good way to
 test it.  I don't remember the last time I received a format=flowed
 message.

I thought Gmail did it, but they don't seem to currently. Apple Mail and 

The other patch I mentioned (the one that FreeBSD makes available in its
ports tree,
http://www.mutt.org.ua/download/mutt-1.5.23/patch-1.5.23.vvv.quote.gz)
adds two options: quote_quoted and quote_empty

The only difference between this one and your $stuff_all_auoted is that
it may not re-quote the outer layers, so
 foo

when quoted might become:
  foo
instead of 
   foo.

Still better than nothing.

It does appear, though, that mutt at least *displays* flowed text
correctly now, as:
 foo
instead of
foo

for the space-stuffed lines

w

Re: Format flowed equals no space in depth 1

[Cameron Simpson]

On 13Sep2014 23:36, Gary Johnson garyj...@spocom.com wrote:

On 2014-09-13, Will Yardley wrote:

I don't think the stuff_all_quoted patch has been kept up to date.


No, it hasn't.  One reason is that I no longer work at the company
where mutt was my primary mail client and where I regularly received
all sorts of different mail formats including format=flowed, so even
if I was motivated to keep it up to date, I don't have a good way to
test it.  I don't remember the last time I received a format=flowed
message.


I sent in format=flowed from mutt all the time now, as of a few months ago. It 
(should) render better for most other users; certainy my paragraphs now look a 
heap better on iPhones and most GUI mail reader.


I'm happy to send you any examples you like, though really they are just 
generated with a vim fill mode.


Cheers,
Cameron Simpson c...@zip.com.au

Why don't we just give Bill Gates ALL the money now and get it over with?
Pride.-- Doonesbury, 17 Aug 1995

Re: Format flowed equals no space in depth 1

[Mark Filipak]

=== Lurk-Mode OFF ===

I created a minor civil war on the Mozilla list when I proposed that
text NOT be flowed at all; that it's the responsibility of the viewing
application to format messages to the user's specification; that
formatting should NOT be coded within messages. Flowing and rewrapping
doesn't work right in any email program I've ever seen. (But as you see,
I'm wrapping text, so you can infer who won the civil war
...Hahahahahahahahaha. Or rather, who lost it.)

=== Lurk-Mode ON ===

On 2014/9/14 1:03 PM, Will Yardley wrote:
 On Sat, Sep 13, 2014 at 11:36:28PM -0700, Gary Johnson wrote:
 On 2014-09-13, Will Yardley wrote:

 I don't think the stuff_all_quoted patch has been kept up to date.

 No, it hasn't.  One reason is that I no longer work at the company
 where mutt was my primary mail client and where I regularly received
 all sorts of different mail formats including format=flowed, so even
 if I was motivated to keep it up to date, I don't have a good way to
 test it.  I don't remember the last time I received a format=flowed
 message.
 
 I thought Gmail did it, but they don't seem to currently. Apple Mail and 
 
 The other patch I mentioned (the one that FreeBSD makes available in its
 ports tree,
 http://www.mutt.org.ua/download/mutt-1.5.23/patch-1.5.23.vvv.quote.gz)
 adds two options: quote_quoted and quote_empty
 
 The only difference between this one and your $stuff_all_auoted is that
 it may not re-quote the outer layers, so
 foo
 
 when quoted might become:
 foo
 instead of 
 foo.
 
 Still better than nothing.
 
 It does appear, though, that mutt at least *displays* flowed text
 correctly now, as:
 foo
 instead of
 foo
 
 for the space-stuffed lines
 
 w
 
 

Re: Format flowed equals no space in depth 1

[Will Yardley]

On Sun, Sep 14, 2014 at 07:05:17PM -0400, Mark Filipak wrote:
 
 I created a minor civil war on the Mozilla list when I proposed that
 text NOT be flowed at all; that it's the responsibility of the viewing
 application to format messages to the user's specification; that
 formatting should NOT be coded within messages. Flowing and rewrapping
 doesn't work right in any email program I've ever seen. (But as you see,
 I'm wrapping text, so you can infer who won the civil war

I think the idea of encoding text so that quoted text can be displayed
properly on various types of devices is important -- maybe even more
important now with all the large monitors and tiny devices we read on.

The problem, though, is that doing so in a tool like mutt where the
editor is (by design) completely divorced from the MUA does make it a
lot more difficult to properly generate flowed text.

w

Re: Format flowed equals no space in depth 1

[Patrick Shanahan]

* Will Yardley mutt-us...@veggiechinese.net [09-14-14 19:29]:
 On Sun, Sep 14, 2014 at 07:05:17PM -0400, Mark Filipak wrote:
  
  I created a minor civil war on the Mozilla list when I proposed that
  text NOT be flowed at all; that it's the responsibility of the viewing
  application to format messages to the user's specification; that
  formatting should NOT be coded within messages. Flowing and rewrapping
  doesn't work right in any email program I've ever seen. (But as you see,
  I'm wrapping text, so you can infer who won the civil war
 
 I think the idea of encoding text so that quoted text can be displayed
 properly on various types of devices is important -- maybe even more
 important now with all the large monitors and tiny devices we read on.
 
 The problem, though, is that doing so in a tool like mutt where the
 editor is (by design) completely divorced from the MUA does make it a
 lot more difficult to properly generate flowed text.

The *real* problem is that email is a text function and all the fancy
formatting is irrelevant.  Sentence structure,tables and paragraphs
suffice.  And all the jump-thru-hoops to present some fancy display
disappear.

-- 
(paka)Patrick Shanahan   Plainfield, Indiana, USA  @ptilopteri
http://en.opensuse.orgopenSUSE Community Memberfacebook/ptilopteri
http://wahoo.no-ip.orgPhoto Album: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/gallery2
Registered Linux User #207535@ http://linuxcounter.net

Re: Format flowed equals no space in depth 1

[Derek Martin]

On Sun, Sep 14, 2014 at 08:20:06PM -0400, Patrick Shanahan wrote:
 The *real* problem is that email is a text function and all the fancy
 formatting is irrelevant.  Sentence structure,tables and paragraphs
 suffice.  And all the jump-thru-hoops to present some fancy display
 disappear.

That is simply false.  Typesetters have been using italics, bold face,
underlining, etc. to indicate emphasis, or other similar changes of
context, since as early as the 15th century, if not earlier--over 500
years ago.  Since then, these formatting devices have come to be used
in the overwhelming majority of printed materials to convey, among
other things, hints about the tone of a passage, or about important
key words or concepts, which unformatted text alone simply can not...
at least not in a professional manner.

It is, IMO, absolutely unforgivable at this date that an e-mail client
not have a way to provide the same, particularly since there are
absolutely zero technological reasons why one should be unable to do
so.  And yes, even on terminal-based mail readers such as Mutt--it is
completely possible to render text as bold, italics, underlined,
colored, etc. on every modern terminal and/or emulator I'm aware of
(and many that are not so modern).

What I would grant is that the standard used to provide this (HTML) is 
not ideal; however it is what is used, universally (excepting perhaps
some small percentage of fringe users who insist on sticking to failed
standards like RTF).  As such, any mailer, such as Mutt, which fails
to provide a reasonable means of creating, displaying, and responding
to such correspondence is incomplete, and has, at least in part,
failed at its job.

This is one important way in which the hand some functionality off to
another program model falls down.

-- 
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Re: Format flowed equals no space in depth 1

[Gary Johnson]

On 2014-09-14, Derek Martin wrote:

 This is one important way in which the hand some functionality
 off to another program model falls down.

I don't think that this is a problem with that model.  There is no
reason that an e-mail client should not hand off the task of editing
a message to an external editor capable of editing a markup
language.  The problem is that that are no stand-alone WYSIWYG HTML
editors, that I know of anyway.

Regards,
Gary

Re: Format flowed equals no space in depth 1

[Mark Filipak]

=== Lurk-Mode OFF ===

I hesitate to be drawn in... but...

See what a hot-button topic formatting is?

Will,
Do you equate quoted text with  characters at the beginning of lines?
Think about it. Embedding that stuff in the actual messages is dumb,
don't you agree? It could/should be handled as meta-data in the message
header (or, more recently, as MIME blocks). Embedding such stuff means
adding rigidity to message format, having to create escapes for those
times when the user wants to type  into a message, and the whole
problem of reflow.

Consider a message line that begins From . You can't create such a
line without the sending application adding  in front of the word
From. That's just plain dumb.

=== Lurk-Mode ON ===

On 2014/9/14 7:29 PM, Will Yardley wrote:
 On Sun, Sep 14, 2014 at 07:05:17PM -0400, Mark Filipak wrote:

 I created a minor civil war on the Mozilla list when I proposed that
 text NOT be flowed at all; that it's the responsibility of the viewing
 application to format messages to the user's specification; that
 formatting should NOT be coded within messages. Flowing and rewrapping
 doesn't work right in any email program I've ever seen. (But as you see,
 I'm wrapping text, so you can infer who won the civil war
 
 I think the idea of encoding text so that quoted text can be displayed
 properly on various types of devices is important -- maybe even more
 important now with all the large monitors and tiny devices we read on.
 
 The problem, though, is that doing so in a tool like mutt where the
 editor is (by design) completely divorced from the MUA does make it a
 lot more difficult to properly generate flowed text.
 
 w
 
 .
 

Format flowed equals no space in depth 1

[Óscar Pereira]

Dear all,

When hitting reply, in the editor the lines of the quoted text are shown
like this: foo, but after sending the mail, the content is shown like
 foo. Furthermore, if when composing the reply, I change from foo
(which is done automatically) to  foo, the end result still shows
like  foo. This happens with vim and nano (and, I presume, all other
editors..). 


I thought this might be related with the inner workings of flowed text
(which I'm using), but checking the relevant RFC [1], I still see no
reason to quote the text (while composing) as foo (instead of 
 foo). Can anyone shed some light?


Thanks,
---Óscar Pereira

[1]: https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3676.txt


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Re: Format flowed equals no space in depth 1

[Will Yardley]

On Sat, Sep 13, 2014 at 07:48:28PM +0100, Óscar Pereira wrote:
 
 When hitting reply, in the editor the lines of the quoted text are shown
 like this: foo, but after sending the mail, the content is shown like
  foo. Furthermore, if when composing the reply, I change from foo
 (which is done automatically) to  foo, the end result still shows
 like  foo. This happens with vim and nano (and, I presume, all other
 editors..). 
 
 I thought this might be related with the inner workings of flowed text
 (which I'm using), but checking the relevant RFC [1], I still see no
 reason to quote the text (while composing) as foo (instead of 
  foo). Can anyone shed some light?

I used to have the behavior you describe, and used Gary Johnson's
stuff_all_quoted patch for a long time. Now, I think FreeBSD's mutt
port has a patch that does something equivalent.

Personally, I think the current behavior is wrong, both in terms of how
mutt renders flowed text in the viewer (which doesn't have to be the
same way it is in the raw message, and IMHO, should follow the normal
quoting behavior), and in terms of how the text is quoted when replying
without $text_flowed set. Even with vim, it's difficult to get an editor
for mutt that can reliably generate correct flowed text, and mutt
itself doesn't have any way to ensure that the text the user generates
is flowed correctly; either way, as best as I can tell, most users of
mutt don't use the flowed text feature, however, we do all receive (and
reply to) messages from senders whose MUAs use flowed text, and replying
to it like
foo
foo

vs
  foo
 foo

is inconsistent, and looks sloppy when one is not generating flowed
text.

You can take a look at this thread for some discussion about it:

You could see if this patch helps:
http://www.mutt.org.ua/download/mutt-1.5.23/patch-1.5.23.vvv.quote.gz

I think it will give something closer to the behavior you want. I don't
think the stuff_all_quoted patch has been kept up to date.

w

How mutt handles format=flowed ?

[Gilles Mazet-Roux]

 Dear Mutt developpers,

I am using Mutt 1.4.2.2i (2006-07-14) on RedHat 5 to automatically read 
and parse incoming emails.
I have troubles while reading emails containing tag format=flowed. In 
such a case, long lines are wrapped after the 77th character.


If I remove format=flowed from the email header, the message is read 
correctly.


Do you have any solution to properly process format=flowed messages ?

Thank you in advance for your help.

Regards,

Gilles

--
Gilles MAZET-ROUX
EMSC / CSEM

European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre
c/o CEA, Bât. Sables
Centre DAM - Ile de France
Bruyères-le-Châtel
91297 Arpajon Cedex
France
Tel : +33 (0) 1 69 26 78 12
Fax : +33 (0) 1 69 26 70 00
e-mail  : ma...@emsc-csem.org
web : http://www.emsc-csem.org

Re: How mutt handles format=flowed ?

[Michael Elkins]

On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 01:17:39PM +0200, Gilles Mazet-Roux wrote:
I am using Mutt 1.4.2.2i (2006-07-14) on RedHat 5 to automatically 
read and parse incoming emails.
I have troubles while reading emails containing tag format=flowed. 
In such a case, long lines are wrapped after the 77th character.


If I remove format=flowed from the email header, the message is 
read correctly.


Do you have any solution to properly process format=flowed messages ?


What you have described sounds like the proper use of format=flowed.  The 
sender is saying that the recipient is free to wrap text where it is 
convenient when displaying to the user.


http://joeclark.org/ffaq.html

me

Re: How mutt handles format=flowed ?

[Gilles Mazet-Roux]

 Thanks. Actually I don't want mutt to wrap the long lines and I don't 
find how to tell mutt not do wrap long lines when format=flowed.


Gilles


Le 29/09/2010 16:16, Michael Elkins a écrit :

On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 01:17:39PM +0200, Gilles Mazet-Roux wrote:
I am using Mutt 1.4.2.2i (2006-07-14) on RedHat 5 to automatically 
read and parse incoming emails.
I have troubles while reading emails containing tag format=flowed. 
In such a case, long lines are wrapped after the 77th character.


If I remove format=flowed from the email header, the message is 
read correctly.


Do you have any solution to properly process format=flowed messages ?


What you have described sounds like the proper use of format=flowed.  
The sender is saying that the recipient is free to wrap text where it 
is convenient when displaying to the user.


http://joeclark.org/ffaq.html

me




--
Gilles MAZET-ROUX
EMSC / CSEM

European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre
c/o CEA, Bât. Sables
Centre DAM - Ile de France
Bruyères-le-Châtel
91297 Arpajon Cedex
France
Tel : +33 (0) 1 69 26 78 12
Fax : +33 (0) 1 69 26 70 00
e-mail  : ma...@emsc-csem.org
web : http://www.emsc-csem.org

Re: How mutt handles format=flowed ?

[Michael Elkins]

On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 04:39:56PM +0200, Gilles Mazet-Roux wrote:
Thanks. Actually I don't want mutt to wrap the long lines and I 
don't find how to tell mutt not do wrap long lines when 
format=flowed.


I think I see what you mean now.  If I make my terminal very wide, the text is 
still wrapped at 72 chars.  Looking at the code, I do see it hardcoded.  There 
seems to be an error with the handling of the $wrap variable.  It looks like 
if you add 'set wrap=-1' as a temporary workaround (at least with Mutt 
1.5.21).


me

Re: How mutt handles format=flowed ?

[Michael Elkins]

On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 09:19:55AM -0700, Michael Elkins wrote:
I think I see what you mean now.  If I make my terminal very wide, 
the text is still wrapped at 72 chars.  Looking at the code, I do see 
it hardcoded.  There seems to be an error with the handling of the 
$wrap variable.  It looks like if you add 'set wrap=-1' as a 
temporary workaround (at least with Mutt 1.5.21).


FYI, this is now fixed in the mutt repo (changeset ea32bc4717da).

me

Re: How mutt handles format=flowed ?

[Christian Ebert]

* Michael Elkins on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 at 10:27:41 -0700
 On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 09:19:55AM -0700, Michael Elkins wrote:
 I think I see what you mean now.  If I make my terminal very
 wide, the text is still wrapped at 72 chars.  Looking at the
 code, I do see it hardcoded.  There seems to be an error with
 the handling of the $wrap variable.  It looks like if you add
 'set wrap=-1' as a temporary workaround (at least with Mutt
 1.5.21).
 
 FYI, this is now fixed in the mutt repo (changeset ea32bc4717da).

http://marc.info/?l=mutt-devm=120065771601523w=2

;-)

c
-- 
_BAUSTELLEN_ lesen! --- http://www.blacktrash.org/baustellen

Re: How mutt handles format=flowed ?

[Michael Elkins]

On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 11:36:43PM +0200, Christian Ebert wrote:

http://marc.info/?l=mutt-devm=120065771601523w=2

;-)


Indeed!  http://marc.info/?l=mutt-devm=128579588200424w=2

me

Re: How mutt handles format=flowed ?

[Christian Ebert]

* Michael Elkins on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 at 14:49:41 -0700
 On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 11:36:43PM +0200, Christian Ebert wrote:
 http://marc.info/?l=mutt-devm=120065771601523w=2
 
 ;-)
 
 Indeed!  http://marc.info/?l=mutt-devm=128579588200424w=2

Best of both worlds, eh? Thank you. I've got it running already.

c
-- 
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format=flowed

[Vineet Kumar]

I'm not quite sure I'd want it, but it's bugging me that I haven't yet
figured out how I'd do it if I did want it. ;-)

I have discovered $text_flowed, but as the manual claims, To actually
make use of this format's features, [I]'ll need support in [my] editor.
Has anybody any idea of how to get this working with any particular
editor? More in my line of interest (if I may be so picky): has anybody
any idea of how to get this working with vim?

I tried googling around, but all my searches come back polluted with
mostly irrelevant archived mailing list messages with format=flowed in
their headers. Essentially, all vim would need to do would be to leave
the space at the end of a line when automatically wrapping for me (and
to leave them there when I go back and change something and 'gq' it).

In case anyone has no idea what I'm talking about, look up rfc 2646
(it's a short read).

good times,
Vineet
-- 
Currently seeking opportunities in the SF Bay Area
Please see http://www.doorstop.net/resume.shtml



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