Re: Newsgroups

[Peter Bloomfield <PeterBloomfield MindSpring com>]

On 2002.04.28 03:46 Steffen Klemer wrote:
> Am 2002.04.27 21:38 schrieb(en) Pawel Salek:
>> On 2002.04.27 21:03 Steffen Klemer wrote:
>>> Am 2002.04.27 20:52 schrieb(en) Laurent Cheylus:
>>>   > But when I finish my GPG support for Balsa, I would like 
>>> develop this
>>>   > feature if
>>>   > other Balsa's users find it usefull (for me : YES).
>>> 
>>> iirc this was discussed a year or so ago, and if my brain isn't 
>>> that far away it was decided that balsa is a mua and not a 
>>> newsreader.
>> 
>> I think your memory does not fail you.
> 
> *happy*
> 
>> 
>>> In my opinion that is (at least in the near future) the way to go. 
>>> Before Balsa isn't the best mua it shouldn't get bloated with such 
>>> stuff.
>>> If you want to put more effort into Balsa you could perhaps catch 
>>> the crappy html-support or sth. like this...
>> 
>> Yes, that's my point of view, too. Or polishing the usability of 
>> filters, or improving address books (in particular LDAP), or...
> 
> Another proposal:
> 
> I would really like a better reply-behavior.
> Because:
> 1) If a line is longer than the 75 points (or whatever you set it up) 
> it wraps the line and puts a > in front of this...
> This confuses every single mail with cite-highlighting ('cause of the 
> missing > -> just look above "develop this")

I'll respond to just this point. As long as the quoted material is 
passed along as `Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed;', its 
paragraphs can be reflowed and requoted reasonably (see 
http://www.imc.org/rfc2646 ), if not perfectly. If any MUA along the 
way isn't flowed-aware, or otherwise removes the `format' parameter, 
the paragraph structure is lost and can be restored only by guesswork. 
If you have the time, and believe you're not changing the meaning of 
the material you're quoting, you can always do it by:
  - inserting a space character at the end of any line that you think 
should be considered part of a paragraph that continues into the next 
line; and
  - converting non-RFC-2646 quoting to the standard: a single `>' 
character.
Then hit Edit -> Wrap Body, and you'll see the result.

Balsa could *perhaps* offer an option for automating this; it still 
uses the user-configured regex to recognize quoted lines for coloring 
them, and could use the same to convert to the standard. However, imho 
that should require user action, and should *not* be carried out 
silently and undetected.

The simple solution: persuade your correspondents to use format=flowed!

Peter