Re: Re: Manual line breaks in emails

On Sat, Mar 28, 2026 at 14:07:35 -0500, Grant Taylor wrote:
> On 3/28/26 12:04 PM, Dale wrote:
> > I'm not sure what I should see.  The part above is ever how wide my 
> > window will allow.

> That's what format=flowed does, cause the logical line to wrap at the 
> window width.

That's assuming there's a window with width, which isn't necessarily the
case.

When I read format=flowed mail on alpine (aka pine) over ssh, it doesn't
get wrapped at all; it is displayed on lines 240 characters long, the
width of the console.  This is not comfortable to read.

Mail with linebreaks every 70-80 characters is somewhat easier to read
for me.  I don't believe alpine can be configured to behave better with
format=flowed.

> Take a look at the message source (control U) and you'll see that the 
> physical lines are wrapped at ~72 characters.

> > I'd like it to wrap at some number, maybe 80, maybe 100.

> It sounds like you are wanting the display of the logical line to be 
> wrapped at 80 or maybe 100 characters.

> That's controlled by the window width.  Read:  Make the window narrower. 
>   ;-)

Yuck!  That's a horrible thing to have to do.  Why should a message's
line width have anything to do with the window width?

mutt behaves better than alpine when displaying format=flowed messages,
breaking lines at around 70 or 80 characters.  I think there's a
configuration variable for this.

> > I'd like to play with the setting a bit.

> The setting effects the number of characters on the physical line in the 
> message source.

> The window width effects the number of characters on the logical line.

> > The arthritis in my neck make turning my head harder.  So I like to 
> > read more narrow stuff by moving just my eyes.

> Fair enough.

> The wonderful thing about format=flowed is I can send physical lines 750 
> characters.  The logical line will only be as many characters wide as 
> your window (or view port as it's called on mobile devices).

As a matter of interest, what about when a paragraph is longer than 750
characters (which isn't all that long)?

> > I can help with this in Firefox by making Tree Style Tabs wide. 
> > That narrows the window space available for articles and such.

> You can do similar by adjusting the width of the folder pane on the 
> left.  (My folder pane is full height on the left.  I think it can be 
> changed.)  --  Try "View" menu, "Layout" sub-menu, "Classic View" or 
> "Vertical View".

> You can also open the message in it's own window and resize it to your 
> liking.

Such forced window resizing must surely be irksome.  It would be for me,
if I read mail on a GUI system.

> I exceedingly rarely have the message window or preview pane the full 
> width of my screen.

> One of the nice things about format=flowed is the text is re-wrapped to 
> the window width as I resize it.

That's also one of the nasty things about format=flowed, depending on
your point of view.

> > I have mailnews.wraplength set to 72.  I'm not sure it is wrapping tho.

> The mailnews.wraplength sets the wrap length of the physical lines in 
> message source code of messages you send and has nothing to do with how 
> many characters are displayed on a line for messages you receive.

> > The other wrap settings are set to true as well.
> Only one of the settings I listed is set to true, the other one is set 
> to false.

>   - mailnews.display.disable_format_flowed_support = false

> disable_format_flowed_support does what it's name said and disabled 
> support for format=flowed.

> If you have that set to true, I expect that my messages are all showing 
> up as approximately 72 characters wide.

> > I'd think it would wrap but even when I narrow or widen the pane for 
> > reading, it just expands to fit and is really wide.  It doesn't seem 
> > to wrap.

> If disable_format_flowed_support is true, then I would expect that you 
> would get a scroll bar under the text in the preview pane or reading 
> window if you made the window / preview pane narrower than text.

> Conversely if disable_format_flowed_support is false, then Thunderbird 
> should re-wrap the text to match the window / preview pane's width.

> > Odd.

> If you've disabled format=flowed, then not really.  At least not based 
> on my understanding of your settings and format=flowed.



> -- 
> Grant. . . .

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).