Must filladapt be disabled? (Was: Filladapt's "fill-paragraph" during "W w")

[Lloyd Zusman <ljz@asfast.com>]

I'm replying to my own message because I've been investigating the issue
I brought up, and now I have a new question ...

Lloyd Zusman <ljz@asfast.com> writes:

> Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic@iskon.hr> writes:
> 
> > Lloyd Zusman <ljz@asfast.com> writes:
> > 
> > > [ ... ] what's the canonical method for causing filladapt's
> > > `fill-paragraph' function to be the one to run for each
> > > paragraph during the standard `W w' article washing procedure
> > > (`gnus-article-fill-cited-article')?
> > 
> > I'm not sure you can do that at all.  AFAIK gnus-cite implements its
> > own algorithms for filling articles.  Ones that work quite well, so
> > I've never tried to replace them with filladapt.
> 
> [ ... at this point, I originally said that
>       `gnus-article-fill-cited-article' in `gnus-cite.el' was
>       handling this correctly when `filladapt' was loaded, but I was
>       mistaken ... ]

It turns out after all that `gnus-article-fill-cited-article' does
indeed disable `filladapt' processing.  Look at the line with the
`***HERE***' comment in this excerpt of the function:

  (defun gnus-article-fill-cited-article (&optional force width)
    "Do word wrapping in the current article.
  If WIDTH (the numerical prefix), use that text width when filling."
    (interactive (list t current-prefix-arg))
    (save-excursion
      (set-buffer gnus-article-buffer)
      (let ((buffer-read-only nil)
	    (inhibit-point-motion-hooks t)
	    (marks (gnus-dissect-cited-text))
  	    (adaptive-fill-mode nil)
	    (filladapt-mode nil)  ;; ***HERE***
	    (fill-column (if width (prefix-numeric-value width) fill-column)))
        (save-restriction
          ;;; etc. ...

By turning `filladapt-mode' off, the standard `fill-region' gets
called and not the one that would have been overridden by the
`filladapt' version.

Is there any compelling reason for `filladapt-mode' to be turned off
here?  If not, could this line just get removed (and possibly the line
above with `adaptive-fill-mode' also)?  Or if it's important to
usually turn this off, could this then be controlled by some special
variable, maybe sort of like this??? ...

  (filladapt-mode (if gnus-cite-use-filladapt filladapt-mode))

... where `gnus-cite-use-filladapt' is a variable whose default value
is `nil' but which could be optionally customized to be `t'.

This way, people like me could force `filladapt' filling during
article washing.

Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance.

-- 
 Lloyd Zusman
 ljz@asfast.com