X-Message-Number: 23152
Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 22:37:13 -0500
From: "Kevin Q. Brown" <>
Subject: Long lines in CryoNet archives

In Message # 23146 Christine Gaspar asked:
    "Would someone please tell me why my posts go on like one endless line,
    rather than with margins. ...".

Christine,
For years the CryoNet software has retained the formatting
of the text rather than trying to wrap around long lines
automatically.  Previous attempts to reformat text created
a new set of problems, such as mangling tabular data like:

   Name    Location    Food
   ----    --------    ----
   Sam     Cupertino   pizza
   Horst   Milwaukee   beer
   Nina    Honolulu    papaya

but with many more columns.  The formatting task became
more difficult when such tabular data was interspersed
with long lines of text that had to be wrapped around.
Messages sent via the "quoted printable" encoding created
special problems, too.  This was discussed briefly in
messages #17167 and #14327.

The best solution is to send your messages so that they
are formatted the way you want to see them.  Thus, type
a carriage return wherever you want a line of text to end.
Unfortunately, unlike programming with text editors on UNIX
command lines, experience with Word processors and Windows
platforms does not accustom one to typing that way.
CryoNet thus has received an increasing number of messages
formatted with a single long line for each paragraph.

Since the long-line-problem appears only in the "dsp.cgi"
web display, I won't need to change the formatting of the
email digests.  Only the "dsp.cgi" filtering must change.
Try the new "dsp.cgi" now:

   http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/dsp.cgi?msg=23146

It assumes that each long line is intended to be an entire
paragraph, which is the convention used by many word processors.
There still are some cases in which it will format the text
poorly, but this new version usually will be an improvement.

      Kevin Q. Brown
      

PS: The daily CryoNet digest emails now are working again.

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