on Tue, Oct 30, 2001 at 05:03:43PM -0800, Craig Dickson (crdic@yahoo.com) wrote:
> Since we seem to be talking about Mutt a lot today, there's one thing
> I haven't found the time to track down an answer to, so perhaps
> Karsten or someone else knows.
>
> When I get mail from someone who uses one of those nasty email clients
> that doesn't wrap lines (or wraps them too long), Mutt's pager wraps
> the lines for me and prepends a red plus sign to the wrapped line.
>
> Anyone know how to turn off the plus sign but still do the
> auto-wrapping?
Beat the luser over the head?
Heh. I just worked this one out myself:
set smartwrap # wraps lines, this is default.
set markers=no # *** no '+' ***
color markers <fg> <bg> # color markers, if desired
It's the middle line you want.
My next question is whether or not I want to do this -- I don't like
unwrapped mail, but looking at the markers drives me nuts.
Incidentally, I tried justifying *why* the frequently-cited standard of
65-75 characters, most frequently 72, what I've come up with so far
follows. Comments appreciated.
Internet email netiquette suggests you set linewrap at 72
characters, prefix quoted lines with a '> ', include an attribution
line for each quoted author at the top of the email, and post your
own followups beneath the relevant quoted portion, with extraneous
quotes, signatures, etc., trimmed. E.g.:
on Tue, Oct 30, 2001, Craig wrote:
> on Tue, Oct 30, 2001, Anne wrote:
> > on Tue, Oct 30, 2001, Harish wrote:
> > > Soup is good food.
> > Only if it's vegetable.
> My grandmother swears by chicken.
But does it cure anthrax?
> Free range, of course.
But how do you do free range chicken soup? Don't you need a
bowl?
Why, you ask?
Various software works in various ways. Some programs reflow text
on command (e.g.: my editor), some wraps lines at a fixed length on
send (MS Outlook, Netscape and Mozilla's built-in mailers, Yahoo
mail), some don't wrap text at all. Frequently the result is ragged
edges and inaccurate attributions -- prefix characters such as '>'
not corresponding to the author of the text.
By setting your wrap at a fixed, standard length (most authorities
suggest 65-75 characters, the IETF email standard says: "'Long' is
commonly interpreted to mean greater than 65 or 72 characters." The
most common suggestion is 72 characters. This ensures that wrapping
won't occur and attributions should remain accurate through several
generations of quoting, even if handled by a couple of generations
of otherwise moderately broken mailers.
Peace.
--
Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com> http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
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