Is linewrap dead?

[Cameron Simpson]

On 05Sep2022 12:56, Kurt Hackenberg <kh at panix.com> wrote:
>On Mon, Sep 05, 2022 at 07:40:54PM +1000, Cameron Simpson wrote:
>>>It seems a little conceptually cleaner to have the editor do the 
>>>whole job, rather than divide it between the editor and Mutt. But 
>>>another complication is that you can edit a message more than once...
>>
>>I think space stuffing is effectively an escape mechanism, like 
>>quoted printable; not something you see at authoring time. The RFC 
>>even says "(Note that space-stuffing is conceptually similar to 
>>dot-stuffing as specified in [SMTP].)", which is again a transport 
>>level escaping.
>>
>>So we need the overt trailing-space stuff because that's an 
>>indicator of end-of-paragraph in f=f, but not the space stuffing, 
>>because that is only needed to transport the text.
>
>Space-stuffing doesn't have to be shown to the user while editing, but 
>it's part of format=flowed, and it's required, not optional. The 
>paragraph before the one you quoted is this:
>
>    On generation, any unquoted lines which start with ">", and any lines
>    which start with a space or "From " MUST be space-stuffed.  Other
>    lines MAY be space-stuffed as desired.
>
><https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3676.html#section-4.4>

Yes, it is required, just as dot stuffing in SMTP is required. I still 
consider it part of the transport/encoding layer _conceptually_. A bit 
like I can compose some nonASCII Unicode text and require 
quoted-printable UTF-8 behind the scenes I suppose.

That's why I consider it conceptually separate. I'm not arguing that 
there's no requirement for space stuffing. I'm arguing that there's no 
need or benefit to burden the authoring interface with it.

A bit like your long-lines<->format=flowed mode switch in your emacs 
mode: they're semanticly equivalent, but you could compose in long-lines 
mode and _send_ in format=flowed format as an entirely valid way to 
author a format=flowed message.

I'm not sure we're disagreeing here, except for the conceptual 
separation of the space-stuffing step.

Cheers,
Cameron Simpson <cs at cskk.id.au>