On Sat, Oct 01, 2022 at 06:35:26PM -0400, Thomas Dickey wrote: > On Sat, Oct 01, 2022 at 10:01:00AM +0100, Chris Green wrote: > > Well it's not entirely off topic, it's about something that works as > > I'd expect it to in vile (and less) but doesn't work right in mutt (my > > E-Mail program of choice). > > > > The issue is about how long chunks of text, with no spaces in them, > > are wrapped when they are too long to fit in the terminal width. The > > typical case (and the one that is a particular problem in mutt) is > > that of long URLs. This *isn't* about how these programs manage > > wrapping normal text made up of 'words' with spaces in between. > > > > In less or vile when there is a long piece of text and you have told > > less/vile to wrap long lines then the long URL (or whatever) is > > displayed wrapped at the right margin but it is still a single string > > and you can select it in the terminal by right clicking on it. > > > > In mutt (in mutt's internal pager specifically) however, although the > > URL is displayed the same (i.e. wrapped at the right margin) it's > > actually broken into one or more lines and you *can't* select it by > > right clicking on it, you just get the single line that you click on. > > > > This has been discussed at length at various times on the mutt mailing > > list and hasn't been solved. > > I'm subscribed to mutt-dev (don't recall it there). > Perhaps mutt-user...
Yes, it's mutt-users. > > (none of the mutt development gets very deep into this stuff) > > > Is there some specific way of using/calling ncurses which does what we > > want? ... and/or does ncurses default to breaking the string at the > > page margin and need some option to prevent it doing this? > > It's a special case of xterm (imitated by more than one terminal emulator, > though probably not _all_). xterm notices when a line is written and > wraps. Screen updates that simply write to the end of a line (including > a previously "wrapped" line) make it forget about follow part of a line. > I sort of understand. So you're saying that it's the xterm (or similar) that is inserting the LF after mutt has output a long string using ncurses. > less and vile have an advantage over ncurses in deciding if a line is > wrapped -- ncurses can't tell if an application writes text (using one > of the wrapping calls such as waddch) intending to construct a long line. > So vile and less manage the wrapping themselves whereas xterm does it for mutt - is that the difference? I thought vile used ncurses. > Actually, long lines in mutt for me have a "+" marking the beginning > of the following lines (which iirc is configurable). > I have "set nomarkers" in my muttrc which turns the + off. At least one can then manually select the long URL and paste it into a browser address bar (as long as the browser, correctly, inores the embedded LF). However right-clicking the URL would be much handier. > > I'm floundering a bit at understanding this as I'm not really sure > > it's an ncurses issue but it does seem to be pretty much the same > > regardless of other things. I use /usr/bin/xfce4-terminal but the > > same happens to lots of other people and I have tried other terminal > > emulators and seen no change. > > > > Can anyone throw any light on this? > > > > -- > > Chris Green > > > > -- > Thomas E. Dickey <dic...@invisible-island.net> > https://invisible-island.net > ftp://ftp.invisible-island.net -- Chris Green
