Re: [Pan-users] Re: Indented first line of paragraph

[Michael A Chase]

On Mon, 30 Jun 2003 22:57:55 +0200 Leandro Guimar�es Faria Corsetti
Dutra <address@hidden> wrote:

> On Sun, 29 Jun 2003 13:38:14 -0700, Duncan wrote:
> 
>> On Sat 28 Jun 2003 11:09, Leandro Guimarães Faria Corsetti Dutra
>> posted as excerpted below:
>>>         In Latin languages it is usual to indent the first line of
>>> a paragraph, like this very same one.
>>>
>>>         But in Pan, this makes the end of the very same line break
>>> into a second too short line.

What is actually happening is that Pan assumes you have two paragraphs.
One indented and one not.  If the first line were long enough, you
would end up with several lines indented the same amount as the first
line:

Before re-wrap:

      Long line 1
   Long line 2

After re-wrap:

      Long line 1a ('paragraph' 1)
      Long line 1b
      Long line 1c
   Long line 2a ('paragraph' 2)
   Long line 2b
   Long line 2c

>> Most electronic mail and news I'm aware of tends to use block style 
>> paragraphs, as I do here, instead, skipping a line between
>> paragraphs as needed, rather than indenting.  
> 
>         Should this mean that I need to use another news client if I
> want to follow Latin conventions instead of newfangled block style?

Possibly.  To handle your situation correctly would require the
text_massager to disquinguish between the case when the first line only
is indented and when it is an indented paragraph.

It's actually worse in my usual case.  I use block paragraphs, but
often receive articles that use first line indenting.  Wrapping them
properly would require the line wrapping code to use a different policy
for each paragraph.

Most of the changes would need to be in pan/base/text-massager.c.
get_paragraphs() would have to recognize paragraphs that have the first
line indented differently from the rest of the paragraph, and preserve
the extra indenting for the first line.

I can think of a few rules that might handle most cases, but there are
lots of boundary conditions that would throw things off badly.  It's
not something I'd want to try to write and debug, but feel free to
submit your request to Bugzilla.  That would at least allow the
developers to make their own decision about whether it is worth their
effort.  If you include a recommended patch, it would improve the odds
of it getting resolved the way you want.

-- 
Mac :})
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