format=flowed joining paragraphs

format=flowed joining paragraphs

[Mark Thomas]

Occasionally I receive format=flowed mail where two paragraphs are
joined that I wouldn't expect to be joined:

|first paragraph second paragraph

When I look at the raw message, I see the following (where $
represents the end of the line):

|first paragraph $
|$
|second paragraph$

(Sometimes there are two blank lines between the paragraphs.)

I know a trailing space is supposed to join two lines as a single
paragraph, but a blank line is supposed to break paragraphs.  For this
case, the author intended two paragraphs, I would expect to see two
paragraphs, and indeed Mozilla and Mulberry display two paragraphs, so
I think Gnus is handling this case incorrectly.

I'm using Gnus 5.10.2, XEmacs 21.4.13.

Cheers,

-Mark

[PATCH] Re: format=flowed joining paragraphs

[Mark Thomas]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1536 bytes --]


According to RFC 2646, the text

      `Take some more tea,' the March Hare said to Alice, very
      earnestly.

      `I've had nothing yet,' Alice replied in an offended tone, `so I
      can't take more.'

      `You mean you can't take LESS,' said the Hatter: `it's very easy
      to take MORE than nothing.'

can be encoded as

      `Take some more tea,' the March Hare said to Alice, very*
      earnestly.*
      #
      `I've had nothing yet,' Alice replied in an offended tone, `so*
      I can't take more.'*
      #
      `You mean you can't take LESS,' said the Hatter: `it's very*
      easy to take MORE than nothing.'#

(using '*' to indicate a soft line break, that is, SP CRLF sequence,
and '#' to indicate a hard line break, that is, CRLF).

Putting the encoded text into a buffer and issuing M-: (fill-flowed)
gives me:

      `Take some more tea,' the March Hare said to Alice, very
      earnestly. `I've had nothing yet,' Alice replied in an offended
      tone, `so I can't take more.' `You mean you can't take LESS,'
      said the Hatter: `it's very easy to take MORE than nothing.'

Using the attached patch, I get:

      `Take some more tea,' the March Hare said to Alice, very
      earnestly.
      
      `I've had nothing yet,' Alice replied in an offended tone, `so I
      can't take more.'
      
      `You mean you can't take LESS,' said the Hatter: `it's very easy
      to take MORE than nothing.'


I haven't thoroughly tested the patch to see if it has any unintended
side effects.

-Mark



[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #2: gnus/lisp/flow-fill.el patch --]
[-- Type: text/x-patch, Size: 459 bytes --]

--- /usr/local/lib/xemacs/xemacs-packages/lisp/gnus/flow-fill.el	2003-05-02 00:47:26.000000000 -0400
+++ /tmp/flow-fill.el	2003-07-24 11:04:08.000000000 -0400
@@ -127,7 +127,7 @@
 		      (save-excursion
 			(unless (eobp)
 			  (forward-char 1)
-			  (looking-at (format "^\\(%s\\)\\([^>]\\)"
+			  (looking-at (format "^\\(%s\\)\\([^>\n\r]\\)"
 					      (or quote " ?"))))))
 	    (save-excursion
 	      (replace-match (if (string= (match-string 2) " ")

Re: [PATCH] Re: format=flowed joining paragraphs

[Kai Großjohann]

Committed.  Thanks.
-- 
~/.signature