Re: Re: Manual line breaks in emails

Hello, Grant.

On Sun, Mar 29, 2026 at 22:01:21 -0500, Grant Taylor wrote:
> On 3/29/26 3:36 PM, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> > That's assuming there's a window with width, which isn't necessarily 
> > the case.

> There is always a window or viewable area.

> > 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.

> Your ""window (viewable area) sounds like it's 240 characters wide.

Indeed, yes.  This is very convenient, for example, in Emacs where one
can split the display into three (almost) equal columns and either
display different buffers in them or 195 contiguous lines from a single
buffer (using follow-mode).

> > This is not comfortable to read.
> That discomfort doesn't surprise me.

> A console of 240 characters wide does surprise me.

> > 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.

> I have no idea what sort of console you are using that is 240 characters 
> wide.

The console on Linux virtual terminals.  With 8x16 pixel characters on a
1920x1080 pixel screen, that fits in 67 rows of 240 columns.

> I'd suggest exploring ways to change that.

It's not something I want to change.  My problem is with format=flowed
in alpine, not with my console width.

> Or if you want to not see a logical line that's the full width of the 
> viewable area (window), see about causing Alpine to not display messages 
> with format=flowed.

I'm not sure there is a config option for that in alpine.  I think I
looked for it a couple of days ago without finding it.

My problem with excessively wide email is one of these problems which
irritates somewhat, but not really enough to prompt me into investing
effort into solving it.  Such problems can be amongst the worst.  ;-(

> Though I would encourage you to send with format=flowed.

I'm not sure about that.  Were I to do that, people reading my mail
would likely have the sort of problems I'm having with f=f

> > 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?

> That's what format=flowed does, display the lines as wide as the area to 
> display them in.

I find that counter-intuitive.  I'm used to resizing windows to enclose
the region which should be visible, so as not to take up excessive
screen space, but also avoiding irritating horizontal scrolling.

> > 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.

> That doesn't surprise me.

[ .... ]

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

> I've always chosen the size of my windows based on the area that I want 
> them in.  Having the test ....

teXt ???

> .... flow to whatever size the window was has always been much nicer
> than needing to scroll side to side.

I would want the text displayed an optimal width for reading, which is
usually reckoned as being somewhere between 70 and 80 characters, at
least for European languages.  I can imagine trying to adjust the width
of a window with a mouse to achieve this would be tiresome and time
consuming.  It seems that mutt can give a specified width, but alpine
doesn't.  I don't know much about other mail user agents.

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

> Sounds to me like you should cause your email client to not display 
> messages using format=flowed.

> Thankfully the only thing special about format=flowed is a space at the 
> end of physical lines that are supposed to be merged with the next line. 
>   So that space will almost certainly not bother you if you disable 
> format=flowed display of messages and instead look at the physical lines.

That's another good idea to try.  Thanks!

> -- 
> Grant. . . .

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).