word wrap on the ADS-L archive

[Grant Barrett]

>While I appreciate that preformatting keeps the paragraphing as the writer
>intended it, surely Barry didn't intend that paragraph to be 5 feet wide by
>1/6 inch high! (Can you tell I grew up with typewriters?) Can we force text
>to wrap at, say, 80 or 90 characters before putting it into "<pre>" HTML?
>Word wrapping is an old and well-understood technology.

By the same modern standards, your browser should auto-wrap text in a browser window
itself, shouldn't it? I suspect you're using Netscape on a Unix or Unix-like
platform. If so, you might try one of the later Mozilla builds, if it is available for your
particular platform. I believe the problem is solved there.

In any case, a preformatting tag might not help, as the problem with Barry's emails
and other like them is that his mail client (usually AOL) does not insert line breaks
as most mail programs do. Thus, there are no preformatted line breaks to preserve.
On the old archive, which we, ADS, control directly, there is a pre tag on each entry.
Barry's messages are still long an unwieldly in the archive.

Forced wrapping is typically either done my the mail client or the listserv, not the
archiving software; perhaps our list administrators can be of some assistance.

Please let me know if you cannot (perhaps due to employer restrictions or system
incompatabilities), install the newer browser so that we can seek other solutions.

--
Grant Barrett
gbarrett at worldnewyork.org
http://www.worldnewyork.org/
78 South Third Street Apt. No. 1
Brooklyn, NY 11211
718 384 8271
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