On Tue, 4 Jan 2000 10:33:28 -0800, Nick Andriash wrote:
MDP> No more than you have already exerted. What happens is that any
lines MDP> that begin with a space will *not* be coloured. If you look
more MDP> closely you may see that the quoted lines which appear in
black MDP> instead of red are slightly indented.
How did you manage to get that paragraph above wrapping the way it did,
especially with the quote prefixes being included in the wrapping? I
wonder if the justify on wrap is doing this?
> Yes I think that may be it... those quoted lines that still appear as
> black, may indeed be slightly indented. Some people include the
> forward symbol in their messages... to highlight a word for instance,
> and then that line will appear in red, even though it's not a quoted
> line. Funny, but TB is giving me all kinds of problems when I try to
> actually type the ">" character in my message. Some times the line
> actually type the ">will automatically go red... but then TB seems to
> actually type the "> repeat what I've already typed... just like it's
> actually type the "> doing right now???
> This makes TB very very awkward to use for replies. You can see from
> the above how messy it looks. Don't know why it does that... and yet
> other times, I can type the character ">" in quotes like this, and
> have no problem with it, just like in this paragraph?? What am I doing
> wrong? I'm just typing away... TB seems to have a mind of it's own.
This problem stems from two things:
a) TB!'s ability to place initials or names in quote prefixes.
b) TB!'s ability to automatically insert a quote prefix when you are in
the act of fragmenting a quoted paragraph.
Let's look at the first point:
If I reply to your message using your first name in the quote prefix.
Each quoted line will begin with "Nick>".
Now when you reply and re-quote the text that I quoted, the reply prefix
generated will be:
Nick>> instead of >Nick> or Allie>Nick> (if you use initials as
well).
It's tidier isn't it? After all, it's you who wrote the paragraph so
attaching your name to it is enough. Also "Nick>>" looks better than
">Nick>" especially when triple quoting is occuring. I think that's nice
but unfortunately it has a loophole which you are experiencing.
If I write '>' without indenting this line, TB! will assume that the
string "If I write '>'" is a quote prefix and will treat it as such. In
fact if the '>' lies within the first 20 characters of the line, TB!
will treat it, and the text preceding it as a quote prefix. Because of
this several things may happen:
If I reply to this line:
Go to Options -> Editor Preferences .....
it will be quoted like this:
Go to Options ->> Editor Preferences .....
instead of the right way which is:
Allie> Go to options -> Editor Prefences ....
All this fiasco may be avoided by indenting message lines that
have '>'/s within 20 characters of the left margin and yet are
not being used a quote prefix. IOW, if you are using '>' in your
message text and the line changes to the quote colour, then you
need to indent the line to avoid faulty quote prefixing by other
TB client users. I hate this because not everyone uses TB by a
long shot.
Now for the next point:
Take a block of quoted text, place the cursor in the middle of any of
the lines and hit the return key. The text to the right of the cursor is
brought down to a new line and voila, a quote prefix is conveniently
inserted in front of it. This assists with manual fragmenting and
reformatting of quoted material for replying.
The problem is that there's a loophole, in that what happened to you
where The Bat! kept inserting the text string "Actually type the >" at
the beginning of your lines can occur. This is because the string is
being treated as a quote prefix. Going to a new line therefore generates
a new quote prefix.
These loopholes or bugs need to be sorted out.
--
-=Allie=- | Using The Bat! v1.38e
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] | Windows NT 4.0 (Service Pack 6)
[ (A)bort (R)etry (F)ail (U)nplug & (S)ell. ]
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