Using "text_flowed"

The Mutt Manual has the following entry under "text_flowed":

| To actually make use of this format's features, you'll need support in
| your editor.

I would be grateful to be pointed to mutt-compatible editors for
composing "flowed" messages.

Felix Karpfen

--
Felix Karpfen
Public Key 72FDF9DF (DH/DSA)

Felix Karpfen schrieb:

> I would be grateful to be pointed to mutt-compatible editors for
> composing "flowed" messages.

Vim, Jed, ...

--
Robert Riebisch
Bitte NUR in der Newsgroup antworten!
Please reply to the Newsgroup ONLY!

On Fri, 04 May 2007 11:29:11 +0200, Robert Riebisch wrote
(<463afce3$0$20295$9b4e6d93@newsspool3.arcor-online.net>):

> Felix Karpfen schrieb:
>
>> I would be grateful to be pointed to mutt-compatible editors for
>> composing "flowed" messages.
>
> Vim, Jed, ...
Thank you.

I was hoping that Vim would work. I suspect that it will need a few
changes to my current settings (text-width, wrap etc) and have written to
"comp.editors" for advice.

Felix
--
Felix Karpfen
Public Key 72FDF9DF (DH/DSA)

* Felix Karpfen on Friday, May 04, 2007:
> I was hoping that Vim would work. I suspect that it will need a few
> changes to my current settings

Probably

:setl fo=+w
:help fo-table

c
--
Python Mutt utilities <http://www.blacktrash.org/hg/muttils/>

Felix Karpfen <felixk@webone.com.au> wrote:
> On Fri, 04 May 2007 11:29:11 +0200, Robert Riebisch wrote
> (<463afce3$0$20295$9b4e6d93@newsspool3.arcor-online.net>):
>
>> Felix Karpfen schrieb:
>>
>>> I would be grateful to be pointed to mutt-compatible editors for
>>> composing "flowed" messages.
>>
>> Vim, Jed, ...
> Thank you.
>
> I was hoping that Vim would work. I suspect that it will need a few
> changes to my current settings (text-width, wrap etc) and have written to
> "comp.editors" for advice.

Take a look at ":help fo-table" and the 'w' option letter. That
should help you compose paragraphs that are compatible with
format=flowed.

HTH,
Gary

On Fri, 04 May 2007 21:53:18 +0000, Gary Johnson wrote
(<1178314225.43632@newsreg.cos.agilent.com>):

> Felix Karpfen <felixk@webone.com.au> wrote:


>> I was hoping that Vim would work. I suspect that it will need a few
>> changes to my current settings.

> Take a look at ":help fo-table"

I did try.

And understood most of what it said. The "w" option was over my head -
because I did not know what "white spaces" are. I am gambling that my
standard practice - separating paragraphs by an empty line - satisfies the
"w" option.

Given that I use an external formatter (part) for reformatting edited text
in vim, I suspect that "fo=w (or possibly fo=aw)" is all that I need to make
vim suitable for writing "format=flow" emails.

Thank you for the advice.

Felix

--
Felix Karpfen
Public Key 72FDF9DF (DH/DSA)

Felix Karpfen <felixk@webone.com.au> wrote:
> On Fri, 04 May 2007 21:53:18 +0000, Gary Johnson wrote
> (<1178314225.43632@newsreg.cos.agilent.com>):
>
>> Felix Karpfen <felixk@webone.com.au> wrote:
>
>
>>> I was hoping that Vim would work. I suspect that it will need a few
>>> changes to my current settings.
>
>> Take a look at ":help fo-table"
>
> I did try.
>
> And understood most of what it said. The "w" option was over my head -
> because I did not know what "white spaces" are. I am gambling that my
> standard practice - separating paragraphs by an empty line - satisfies the
> "w" option.

The meaning of "white space" depends on the context. In this case
it means one or more space characters and/or tab characters. (In
some other cases it may include newlines, carriage returns, form
feeds and vertical tabs.)

The 'w' option means that a paragraph would look like this if you
had ":set list".

Each line of text $
within a paragraph $
would end with a $
space. The last line $
of each paragraph $
would end without a $
space.$
The next line would $
then begin the next $
paragraph. No blank $
line is needed to $
separate paragraphs.$

You may need to play with it a bit, either with 'a' also set or by
using the gqip command to manually reformat each paragraph, to get a
better idea of how it works.

>
> Given that I use an external formatter (part) for reformatting edited text
> in vim, I suspect that "fo=w (or possibly fo=aw)" is all that I need to make
> vim suitable for writing "format=flow" emails.

Your external formatter will have to know about "format=flowed" text
or it will likely remove all white space from the ends of the lines
it outputs.

> Thank you for the advice.

You're welcome. I hope you can get this all working the way you
like.

Regards,
Gary

On Mon, 07 May 2007 00:46:17 +0000, Gary Johnson wrote
(<1178497396.688214@newsreg.cos.agilent.com>):

> The meaning of "white space" depends on the context. In this case it
> means one or more space characters and/or tab characters. (In some
> other cases it may include newlines, carriage returns, form feeds and
> vertical tabs.)

Sadly, I think that I may have totally misunderstood the benefits of
"format=flowed". The documentation, that I have found, had the unstated
assumption that potential users have an email program that needs a
Windows/XWindows environment. In such an environment, the benefits are
significant; received emails look attractive, no matter what the size of
the window is.

Assuming the penny has finally dropped, my current understanding is that
Mutt can be tweaked to _send_ plain text messages in "format=flowed". It
does not _display_ messages in that format because it is designed to work on
a console and not in an XWindows environment.

Have I finally got the story straight?

If so, I apologise for wasting the time of the respondents who were good
enough to answer my initial and followup queries.


Felix

--
Felix Karpfen
Public Key 72FDF9DF (DH/DSA)

On Wed, 09 May 2007 07:16:35 +1000, Felix Karpfen wrote:
> On Mon, 07 May 2007 00:46:17 +0000, Gary Johnson wrote
> (<1178497396.688214@newsreg.cos.agilent.com>):
>
> > The meaning of "white space" depends on the context. In this case it
> > means one or more space characters and/or tab characters. (In some
> > other cases it may include newlines, carriage returns, form feeds and
> > vertical tabs.)
>
> Sadly, I think that I may have totally misunderstood the benefits of
> "format=flowed". The documentation, that I have found, had the unstated
> assumption that potential users have an email program that needs a
> Windows/XWindows environment. In such an environment, the benefits are
> significant; received emails look attractive, no matter what the size of
> the window is.
>
> Assuming the penny has finally dropped, my current understanding is that
> Mutt can be tweaked to _send_ plain text messages in "format=flowed". It
> does not _display_ messages in that format because it is designed to work on
> a console and not in an XWindows environment.

I have friends who send me format=flowed mail from (Apple's Mail.app),
and I have applied the following patch to mutt to make it render them
properly:

http://user.cs.tu-berlin.de/~pdmef/m...ttng.ff.4.diff

The problem I was having was that their mail clients were sending URLs
purposfully broken across lines, and the patch above causes mutt to
render such lines unbroken.

> Have I finally got the story straight?
>
> If so, I apologise for wasting the time of the respondents who were good
> enough to answer my initial and followup queries.

I myself wasted a lot of time trying to understand why these emails were
showing up in my inbox so obviously broken. I could have understood if
they were all one line, but they were clearly 80 column but kept on
breaking the URLs...I finally figured out that this standard floating
around would let you render the text "ok" for ignorant terminals and
allow smart terminals to reformat it.

Let me know if this makes sense....

Mike

* Mike Hunter on Tuesday, May 08, 2007:
> I have friends who send me format=flowed mail from (Apple's Mail.app),
> and I have applied the following patch to mutt to make it render them
> properly:
>
> http://user.cs.tu-berlin.de/~pdmef/m...ttng.ff.4.diff

If you build your own, you can use the devel versions as well:

Above patch is included in 1.5.15:
<ftp://ftp.mutt.org/mutt/devel/mutt-1.5.15.tar.gz>

or in tip (Mercurial repo):
<http://dev.mutt.org/hg/>

c
--
Python Mutt utilities <http://www.blacktrash.org/hg/muttils/>