[Users] word wrapping

[wwp]

Hello blind,


On Tue, 28 Oct 2014 19:17:57 +1100 blind Pete <peter_s_d at fastmail.com.au> wrote:

> On Sun, 26 Oct 2014 15:04:54 +1100
> blind Pete <peter_s_d at fastmail.com.au> wrote:
> [snip]
> 
> Hi again, 
> 
> The response has been surprising; it seems that I am not the only old
> person here.  
> 
> Just in case there is anyone who is really old is reading this, the
> spaces between the words are here to stay.  It makes the text much
> easier to read and we don't have to use expensive vellum any more.  
> 
> Historically, typography was an art with no hard and fast rules.
> All of the printers were trying to represent the language, or languages,
> well and out do their competitors.  Things have more or less
> standardised within English, but that does not mean that we can not set
> new standards.  :-)  Consider emoticons, for example.  
> 
> There are at least four different definitions of the point.
> 1)  /Postscript/ version one defines a point as one seventy second of
>     one inch.  Later versions of /Postscript/ backtracked and stated 
>     that the "design unit" of 1/72" was not a printer's point.  
> 2)  The English printer's point of slightly less than 1/72".  
> 3)  The American printer's point, very slightly different again.  
> 4)  The Australian Bureau of Meteorology used to quote rainfall in
>     points - that is hundredths of an inch.  
> Don't use points for precision work.  
> 
> Ligatures (multiple letters combined into a single glyph) have been
> shunned as needlessly complex, but in Arabic they have become an art
> form.  They have letters that change shape depending on whether they
> are at the start of the word, the end of the word, or enclosed.  And
> they write from right to left.  English is easier.  
> 
> UTF has dozens of white space characters.  The ones that I am
> interested in are the "en" (the width of the letter 'N', used to
> separate words), the "em" (twice as wide as an en, and used to separate
> sentences), and the non breaking space (the word processor's night
> mare).  Aside: How do you enter a NBSP into CM?  I just tried
> <ctl><space>, <alt><space>, and <super><space>; without success.  
> 
> If you can handle spaces, then hyphens are not too bad.  You just have
> to know the difference between a hard hyphen ("re-cover" is not the
> same as "recover" and should not be split), a discretionary hyphen
> ("non-standard" may be split), soft hyphens (added and removed by the
> word processor as required), and invisible hyphenation hints.  Apart
> from minor inconsistencies between official standards, web browsers,
> dialects, and common ignorance; it is all straight forward -- over the
> Niagara Falls.  
> 
> Distinguishing between a new line and a new paragraph was not a problem
> on the printed page, but with text that can be re-flowed it is nice to
> have an unambiguous paragraph marker.  Should the polite line break
> at 72 characters be added during composition?  Or only on sending?  
> 
> If complex algorithms make you nervous, this might be a disturbing
> message.  Sorry.   
> 
> Now, consider variable width fonts...  
> 
> I'm not trying to troll, I'm just thinking about some very minor
> improvements, and whether they are worth the effort - or even
> possible.  Hopefully someone found this mildly interesting.  

Interesting, thanks for sharing all this with us!

I'm afraid Claws Mail's text editor isn't meant to be a rich text editor
(that's why we allow using an external editor, if one dares) :-),
but a simple text editor with wrapping and quotes folding. Wrapping is
not bug-free or flaw-free, and I doubt developers will implement rich
text features like spacing pondering, even non-breakable spacing (which
will require to allow seeing control characters, and we're back to the
simple vs rich text editing thing). Of course I'm only speaking in my
name!


Regards,

-- 
wwp
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