Public SourceMage Discussion List

[Thomas Orgis <thomas-forum AT orgis.org>]

Am Fri, 14 Oct 2011 14:54:03 +0200
schrieb Bor Kraljič <pyrobor AT ver.si>: 

> DISCUSSION:
> Do we merge devel-long_desc_fix into master?

> * on some tty you can only see 80 columns and this helps to see whole long 
> description

Well, my ttys wrap long lines, this includes ttys smaller than 80 cols
that have to wrap the 80-col-wrapped stuff. But granted, it's not
pretty as it doesn't do word boundaries.

Actually I would welcome flexible paragraphs with spell descriptions,
meaning that we shift the text through fmt on display to accomodate the
current terminal nicely. Something like

bash$ width=$(stty size | cut -d' ' -f2)
bash$ gaze what mpg123 | fmt -w $width -s

The -s should avoid messing up of carefully formatted stuff like item
lists, just breaking the too long lines. I guess something similar has
been used in the script working on the branch. Therefore I ask: Why not
include that logic in gaze and at the same time gain a bit of
flexibility?


Alrighty then,

Thomas.

PS: Some of you might note, while I am generally opposed to fixed-format
text wrapped to certain widths because of arbitrary technialities, that
I am now sending a "classic" wrapped eMail. I am realizing the existence
of the 998 characters limit from rfc 2822. If I'm forced to keep
paragraphs below 998 chars, I can as well just wrap to 72 chars.
And format=flowed doesn't cut it, sadly. I imagine smart reformatting
in the client is the way to go, if the user wants it, in a similar
fashion to the proposed gaze behaviour above.

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