Re: MHonArc mail archive line wrapping

[Marc Petit-Huguenin <[e-mail]>]

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On 02/15/2011 01:32 PM, Bjoern Hoehrmann wrote:
> * Stuart Cheshire wrote:
>> In the MHonArc mail archive there are often super-long lines, which  
>> would be wrapped to the window width when viewing in most mail  
>> clients, but when viewed in a web browser they appear as long single  
>> lines which take a lot of left-to-right scrolling to read them.
> 
> That is the result of some clients and users violating netiquette and
> mail standards, for instance, RFC 1855, section 2.1.1:
> 
>   - Limit line length to fewer than 65 characters and end a line
>     with a carriage return. 
> 
> and RFC 2822 (and similarily RFC 5322), section 2.1.1:
> 
>   There are two limits that this standard places on the number of
>   characters in a line. Each line of characters MUST be no more than
>   998 characters, and SHOULD be no more than 78 characters, excluding
>   the CRLF. 
> 
> And this does not cause problems just with unwrapped lines, it also has
> other effects, like people quoting excessively long lines on one line
> but then write their own text properly wrapped (that's appropriate be-
> havior if long lines are rare and most likely intentional, such as when
> including some computer code you don't want wrapped at odd positions.)
> 
> I note that one of the main culprits here are Apple Mail users, although
> you seem to be using it yet have managed to send properly wrapped lines.
> If there is something Apple Mail users can do to stop their netiquette
> and standards violations, I would apprciate any pointer you may have.
> 
> Obviously the solution is to have those using broken or misconfigured
> clients use clients that are not broken or configure them correctly.
> 
> As for the list archives, you can make the lines wrap by changing the
> style sheet (or use an appropriate user style sheet), for instance,
> 
>   pre { white-space: pre-wrap; }
> 
> should probably do it in modern clients (for older clients there is
> option to use proprietary extensions in some browsers, but that may
> not be necessary these days.) This would seem preferable over forcing
> line wraps in the archival software as that would break lines that are
> meant to be long for very good reasons.

And for people who do no want to wait for Central Services to fix the problem,
here's a Greasemonkey script:

// ==UserScript==
// @name           Fix wrap
// @namespace      http://shalmaneser.org/fix-wrap
// @include        http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/*
// ==/UserScript==
var pres = document.getElementsByTagName('pre');
for (var i = pres.length - 1; i >= 0; i--) {
	pres[i].style.whiteSpace = 'pre-wrap';
}

- -- 
Marc Petit-Huguenin
Personal email: [e-mail]
Professional email: [e-mail]
Blog: http://blog.marc.petit-huguenin.org
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