[CSCMail-Users] Message Editor and wordwrapping

[Tim J. <ti...@ti...>]

Hi all,

I hope this is the right place to send bugreports (CZ, you reading?).

I have a load of them but not much time to report them, but here goes with
the biggest one which is driving me absolutely up the wall.

Using CSC 1.7.8, the message editor is atrocious.  Now I'm fairly new to all
this Linux/GNOME thing. As far as I can tell it's using some kind of standard
editor.  Apart from being atrocious and buggy (I've noticed some bugs in it
appear in a totally different program), it's even worse coupled with the
wordwrapping in CSC.  I'm ending up sending mails out that look incredibly
messy and look like they were written with Microshit Outlook, which is NOT a
good impression to give to employers etc.  

This seems to be a particular problem when saving a message as a draft and
re-editing - when I open the editor again I get lines that I'd typed as a
complete paragraph looking like this:

lots of words blah blah words blah blah blah blah blah blah blah <end of line>
word
blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah

(i.e. CSC's wordwrapping is BROKEN)
(I don't even know if you'll be able to see the point I'm making, as CSC may
break what I just put! But the point is that mysteriously although I typed a
whole paragraph as one line without pressing enter, it splits it up into
alternate long lines and then a line wit a single word then a long line then a
line with a single word and so on....URGH :( )

[You may see a good example in this email, because I saved this as a draft and
then re-edited it and although I've tried to tidy it up a bit you will probably
see what I mean)

So I would say that an important priority is either to get or write a *GOOD*
message editor.  So here are the features I say it needs, based on many years
of using text editors both as a programmer and to write emails in.

- CSCMail should NOT alter the message wrapping in ANY way after I press
send. 
I want to see the message EXACTLY as it will go out.

- Hence, word wrapping should take place as the message is written, wrapping
with a "hard" line break after a configurable number of characters (74-80 is
taken as a good number).

- HOWEVER, if you implement a simple hard wordwrap after 'x' chars, that
becomes a problem if you then go back and edit that paragraph, because then
all the wordwrapping goes messed up and you have to delete all the hard line
breaks
and put them back in the right places manually.  So, a *smart* wordwrap is
essential.  In this, it reformats the current paragraph if you start editing
it
again.	So for example if you go back and insert words in the middle of a
large
paragraph, it will dynamically adjust the lines as you type so that all lines
wrap as close to x characters as they can, but still keeping hard line breaks
(i.e. the message goes out exactly as you see it). If anyone is unclear what
I
mean and has access to an Amiga by any chance, check out GoldEd on that. 
Well
known for being a brilliant text editor, and this is one of the features it
has. 


I wish I had the time or knowledge to be able to help by writing such an
editor, but at the current time I don't.  However, PLEASE PLEASE consider
this
as a top priority because to me all other bugs pale in significance with the
fact that if I can't send out an email that looks neat, the program is broken
:(

Oh, one other point that is important in this.	When  quoting a mail, the
wordwrap setting should be *IGNORED*. I.e. it should allow quoted lines to go
over the usual x chars length.	The reason for this is to avoid messy
Outlook-style quoting where you get:

>>> quoted line quoted line quoted line quoted line quoted line quoted
>line
>>> quoted line quoted line

which apart from looking abysmal is simply BROKEN (note the incorrect number of
quotes on the second line) .  I simply cannot cope with sending out mails that
look like that.


If anyone has any doubts about what I'm saying, I've been sending emails for
several years using these methods (on the Amiga) and it's resulted in neat,
tidy emails which look good and which I can be confident about sending, which
I
can't say about this awful system where the lines "soft wrap" at the end of
every line and the wordwrapping is done AFTER I press send (this also
precludes
drawing diagrams and so on in text in emails, unless you put hard wraps in
manually).


CSC is a great program with great potential, and I'm very grateful to CZ for
writing it as coming from the Amiga with the BEST mail program for ANY platform
(YAM), it's shocking and amazing how little decent software there is for
Linux...most mail clients are simply awful. CSC has potential, but needs this
BASIC functionality sorting out urgently...

Cheers,

Tim