Re: Line Wrapping Question

[Dirk Fieldhouse <[e-mail]>]

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] says...
>...>
>
>The problem is this: if the user drags the window wider, we will then wrap at
>the current width of the window, which may well be excessively wide.
>
>One solution to this, which we rejected, would be to disallow the window from
>being made wider than 79 columns.  That would be bad, because there are
>situations when it is necessary and appropriate to send messages with long
>lines: when formatting a table, for example.
>
>Another solution would be to pop up a dialog box warning the user that their
>window is too wide (probably just before the message is sent) which offered
>to shrink it and allow the paragraphs to refill.  We may yet do this, but
>rejected it initially as too intrusive and annoying.

As a matter of interest, the WinVN freeware Newsreader does do this and it is 
not annoying to my mind. The check appears when the Post/Send Article option 
is selected, not before. It advises you to resize the window and you can then 
avoid the reappearance of the dialog by saving the window positions.

Implementation hints: make sure the dialog box explains the problem clearly - 
this to get through to the sort of user who would treat your guideline rule as 
a bug - and ideally (unlike WinVN) have a button that resizes the composition 
window to an acceptable width. You also need a facility to set the initial 
composition window width permanently.

Thus the options when posting with >80 (78?) column text should be:
-	OK: post anyway with my non-standard line length
-	Cancel: let me think about the width and perhaps resize the window 
myself
-	Resize: resize the composition window to wrap at column n (default 
n=76, could be a control to allow values 72<=n<=80)
-	and a sub-option on Resize to set the default width.

-- 
Dirk Fieldhouse                 Logica UK Limited
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