Replies by email are not reformatted

[gui1ty (Penguinpee)]

I just noticed that my replies by e-mail are not reflowed to fit the available space.

This might have been an issue on my side. I changed a setting in Thunderbird and it should now send e-mails in format=flowed instead of hard wrapping^[1].

Nonetheless, I think Discourse should be smarter about handling e-mails and reflow them no matter if the message is sent in format=flowed or hard wrapped.

A good example to illustrate what I mean is the discussion regarding netinstall ISOs:

Fedora netboot images improvements

I agree wholeheartedly. I had argued for this in the discussion at the time and also offered to write such a guidance. And also something like “Looking around – First steps with Fedora”. I worry that with the current situation, some people will abandon the installation in frustration and silently turn to something else. It would be helpful if you could share your opinion with the Working Group. Right. And this where Matt Discourse Moderator (@mattdm ) come…

You can see that the replies I sent by mail are narrower. The box is wider than the text. Since I had quoted text hard wrapped as well, it applies to both: quote and reply^[2].

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1. I have it set to wrap at 72 characters ↩︎

2. I’ll probably file another bug upstream. But I haven’t had any reaction yet on my first RFE regarding e-mail integration, which is rather discouraging. ↩︎

[mattdm (Matthew Miller)]

@gui1ty

Nonetheless, I think Discourse should be smarter about handling e-mails and reflow them no matter if the message is sent in format=flowed or hard wrapped.

I’m afraid that if it did that, someone else would complain that it’s not respecting the formatting properly. Hard to win…

[gui1ty (Penguinpee)]

Sorry, but this is just an excuse trying to justify bad behavior. Users
posting on the website directly don’t get a choice of wrapping there
post at 72 characters.

Moreover, it makes the layout of the threads look ugly. If I post to a
website by whatever means, I expect the website to use coherent formatting.

If you like me to make my point even clearer, I’m willing to turn off
format=flowed and set the wrapping to 10 characters just for replies
to Discourse.

https://media.tenor.com/kBpd4_qF4-kAAAAC/scroll-you-must-scroll.gif(image larger than 4 MB)

[mattdm (Matthew Miller)]

@gui1ty

If you like me to make my point even clearer, I’m willing to turn off
format=flowed and set the wrapping to 10 characters just for replies
to Discourse.

I don’t get it. Isn’t turning on format=flowed the solution?

If someone
really wants
to, they can
make narrow
paragraphs
via the web,
too.

[gui1ty (Penguinpee)]

I don’t get it. Isn’t turning_on_ format=flowed the solution?

Apparently not. Or I missed another setting. I just went through the
config again, toggled a couple of switches, pushed a few buttons,
applied some stardust and used my . Let’s see…

If someone
really wants
to, they can
make narrow
paragraphs
via the web,
too.

Point taken!

[gui1ty (Penguinpee)]

Hmm… I’m getting annoyed. While I have turned off and/or toggled everything that could have an effect, Thunderbird appears to still wrap my e-mails at the set number of characters.

I have that turned off now. But it means lines run the entire width of the editor. And I dislike that very much.

…some digging later…

It seems I misunderstood what format=flowed does.

https://joeclark.org/ffaq.html

TL;DR It applies to displaying of quoted text in e-mail replies, it seems.

I guess, that means I’ll either keep my preferred settings (hard line breaks) or I need to find a way of resizing my editor, so it shows ~80 characters. The latter will be a pain. So, sc^&w you Discourse! (Pardon my French).