Thunderbird - line wrap vs line break

[alex.gman]

I like thunderbird, because it's a cross-platform app, with a
consistent look and feel.

However, it has one annoying feature: when composing a message,
thunderbird can wrap the text automatically, which I'd like to use. But
when using this feature, if you accidentally hit 'enter' in the middle
of a paragraph, after wrapping odd-looking messages get sent.

It's a little hard to explain - but if you've never experienced it, and
don't understand what I'm talking about, you probably can't help me
either.

Anyway, even though I have "wrap after 72 chars" set in the options,
after I hit 'send', sometimes messages get sent with lines that are too
long, or have a linebreak in the middle of the screen, neither of which
were apparent to the sender (Bcc: myself shows this though)

Any way to work around this problem other than turning the wrapping
off? Even pine-like behavior would be preferable to me, although not
ideal.

 

[Roy Schestowitz]

__/ [[email protected]] on Wednesday 16 November 2005 07:48 \__

I like thunderbird, because it's a cross-platform app, with a
consistent look and feel.

However, it has one annoying feature: when composing a message,
thunderbird can wrap the text automatically, which I'd like to use. But
when using this feature, if you accidentally hit 'enter' in the middle
of a paragraph, after wrapping odd-looking messages get sent.

Let me see if I get this right. Is your text being wrapped twice? In my
particular case, I stick to no wrapping while composing. Only once mes-
sages get despatched, text gets wrapped (at columns 78 if I recall cor-
rectly). Why would you hit enter in the middle of a paragraph unless you
begin a new one? Is it not glaringly obvious to the eye when lines
'break'? I know this is not a most helpful advice, but I am trying to en-
vision the scenario you describe. Without wrapping enabled at composition
time, I agree that WYSIWYG benefits are lost.

It's a little hard to explain - but if you've never experienced it, and
don't understand what I'm talking about, you probably can't help me
either.

I think we have similar problems, but the decription differs slightly.

Anyway, even though I have "wrap after 72 chars" set in the options,
after I hit 'send', sometimes messages get sent with lines that are too
long, or have a linebreak in the middle of the screen, neither of which
were apparent to the sender (Bcc: myself shows this though)

Any way to work around this problem other than turning the wrapping
off? Even pine-like behavior would be preferable to me, although not
ideal.

Why not turning it off altogether and relying on automatic re-formation of
the message? I find this somewhat confusing as I explained above, but it
can sometimes make editing easier. Copying and pasting is simplified too.
Make it nothing like E-mail (with its known limitations and restriction)
until the point when it actually becomes and E-mail message.

Roy

 

[alex.gman]

I'll rephrase the problem description:

When you have long lines in Emacs, Emacs 'wraps' them on the screen
(but not in text) and shows a little curved arrow to show that this
'wrapping' took place.

On the other hand, in Thunderbird, you can't tell where the lines were
merely visually wrapped on the editor screen, and where an actual
newline symbol is inserted, i.e. there is no special cue like in Emacs.
This causes problems - two different things that look the same: '\n'
and semantically meaningless visual representation.

This has nothing to do with WYSIWYG, just bad GUI design.

 

[Roy Schestowitz]

__/ [[email protected]] on Wednesday 16 November 2005 09:57 \__

I'll rephrase the problem description:

When you have long lines in Emacs, Emacs 'wraps' them on the screen
(but not in text) and shows a little curved arrow to show that this
'wrapping' took place.

Ahh... okay.

On the other hand, in Thunderbird, you can't tell where the lines were
merely visually wrapped on the editor screen, and where an actual
newline symbol is inserted, i.e. there is no special cue like in Emacs.
This causes problems - two different things that look the same: '\n'
and semantically meaningless visual representation.

This has nothing to do with WYSIWYG, just bad GUI design.

I think that many users would find this confusing. Let us remember that
Thunderbird is aimed at a wide audience with varying levels of expertise.
For the same reason, in Programs like Writer and Word, paragraph symbols
and cues are hidden by default. People would otherwise assume that these
are visible to the recipient or printer.

I now understand exactly what you mean, but must also point out that it
has never bothered me. Perhaps it's due to the fact that I primarily send
text; not large chunks of text either. Try to see if a plug-in (extension)
does exactly what you are after. There is such a large pool of extensions
out there and it grows by the day. Also consider editing your messages in
an external editor. This message of mine, for example, will be sent using
KNode, but will be processed in KEdit, which will in turn have Perl handle
some justification and hyphenation usign TeX.

Hope it helps,

Roy

 

[Guest]

I'm still trying to work out what this has to do with windows xp ?
--
there are no problems just challenges

__/ [[email protected]] on Wednesday 16 November 2005 09:57 \__

I'll rephrase the problem description:

When you have long lines in Emacs, Emacs 'wraps' them on the screen
(but not in text) and shows a little curved arrow to show that this
'wrapping' took place.

Ahh... okay.

On the other hand, in Thunderbird, you can't tell where the lines were
merely visually wrapped on the editor screen, and where an actual
newline symbol is inserted, i.e. there is no special cue like in Emacs.
This causes problems - two different things that look the same: '\n'
and semantically meaningless visual representation.

This has nothing to do with WYSIWYG, just bad GUI design.

I think that many users would find this confusing. Let us remember that
Thunderbird is aimed at a wide audience with varying levels of expertise.
For the same reason, in Programs like Writer and Word, paragraph symbols
and cues are hidden by default. People would otherwise assume that these
are visible to the recipient or printer.

I now understand exactly what you mean, but must also point out that it
has never bothered me. Perhaps it's due to the fact that I primarily send
text; not large chunks of text either. Try to see if a plug-in (extension)
does exactly what you are after. There is such a large pool of extensions
out there and it grows by the day. Also consider editing your messages in
an external editor. This message of mine, for example, will be sent using
KNode, but will be processed in KEdit, which will in turn have Perl handle
some justification and hyphenation usign TeX.

Hope it helps,

Roy

 

[RobertVA]

I like thunderbird, because it's a cross-platform app, with a
consistent look and feel.

However, it has one annoying feature: when composing a message,
thunderbird can wrap the text automatically, which I'd like to use. But
when using this feature, if you accidentally hit 'enter' in the middle
of a paragraph, after wrapping odd-looking messages get sent.

It's a little hard to explain - but if you've never experienced it, and
don't understand what I'm talking about, you probably can't help me
either.

Anyway, even though I have "wrap after 72 chars" set in the options,
after I hit 'send', sometimes messages get sent with lines that are too
long, or have a linebreak in the middle of the screen, neither of which
were apparent to the sender (Bcc: myself shows this though)

Any way to work around this problem other than turning the wrapping
off? Even pine-like behavior would be preferable to me, although not
ideal.

Try the netscape.mozilla.thunderbird group over at secnews.netscape.com .
You may need to set your news reader for server port number 563 and a
secure connection.