Re: citation and flow-filling

[Simon Josefsson <simon@josefsson.org>]

prj@po.cwru.edu (Paul Jarc) writes:

> When flow-filling an article with quoted material, Gnus treats space
> as a non-quote character, even when it is followed by a quote
> character (">") and is preceded by only quote characters.  This is
> what RFC 2646 says it ought to do, but in practice, it breaks.  Gnus
> actually breaks this itself, because when quoting, "> " is prepended
> to each line.  If the line already starts with a quoting character,
> then only ">" should be prepended.

Yes.  Try attached patch.

> I see message-cite-prefix-regexp, but I don't think it's used for
> flow-filling, or citation in replies.  If not, I'd be happy to add
> the code, if someone can point me in the right direction.

I don't think it should be used in flow-filling (it has it's own hard
coded rules to match rfc2646), but the patch below makes use of it
when indenting messages.

> Also, is there an existing function I can add to message-send-hook or
> some such to make my messages format=flowed?

Until emacs support visual cues for soft and hard line breaks, I see
little point of adding support for it in Gnus -- I mean, how would you
know if a paragraph contained soft or hard line breaks when you edit
it?

I do find it quite amazing that emacs doesn't support visual cues for
TAB, soft/hard linebreaks etc though.  I mean, I bet even vi supports
this.  (Lete the flame war begin... :-))

--- message.el.~6.82.~	Wed May 16 20:52:26 2001
+++ message.el	Wed May 23 21:33:16 2001
@@ -523,6 +523,12 @@
   :type 'string
   :group 'message-insertion)
 
+(defcustom message-yank-cited-prefix ">"
+  "*Prefix inserted on cited lines of yanked messages.
+Fix `message-cite-prefix-regexp' if it is set to an abnormal value."
+  :type 'string
+  :group 'message-insertion)
+
 (defcustom message-indentation-spaces 3
   "*Number of spaces to insert at the beginning of each cited line.
 Used by `message-yank-original' via `message-yank-cite'."
@@ -2074,7 +2080,9 @@
       (save-excursion
 	(goto-char start)
 	(while (< (point) (mark t))
-	  (insert message-yank-prefix)
+	  (if (looking-at message-cite-prefix-regexp)
+	      (insert message-yank-cited-prefix)
+	    (insert message-yank-prefix))
 	  (forward-line 1))))
     (goto-char start)))