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[StrongED] Using hardwrap effectively



In message <87810d3452.Iyonix@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
          Ron <iyonix@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> I think I have stopped the lines of text in a paragraph from jumping up
> to the curser by unticking the hardwrap.
> That was annoying that was. (-:

Hardwrap seems to be a continuous source of bemusement and annoyance,
and I'll admit it takes some getting used to. Even then it'll trip you
up from time to time - it does to me - but once you know the pitfalls
and how to avoid them it's not so bad.

So I thought it'd be a good idea to write up a short description of how
to use hardwrap effectively. I've put it in a new thread so that it can
be found easily in mail archives.


Hardwrap is there to prevent lines getting longer than a certain limit.
Emails and news posts are examples where such a limit is imposed, which
is why hardwrap is on by default in News mode. Hardwrap achieves its
purpose in two ways, by splitting a line that's gotten too long and by
floating up text from the line below when there's room on the current
line.

It's this floating up that causes most problems, as there are times when
it's undesirable. There are however a couple of ways to avoid it:

 - Turning off hardwrap completely in Mode choices -> Wrapping.

 - Tick 'Wrap line only' in Mode choices -> Wrapping. With this option
   on, StrongED will only split lines too long.

 - Turning off hardwrap temporarily by clicking Adjust over the
   wrapwidth indicator on the Infobar. This useful for adding sections
   where you want to control text wrapping with the rest of the text
   being wrapped automatically.

 - Prefix the line with a bullet (-, * or o). Lines starting with a
   bullet will never be floated up. This is useful for a series of short
   lines, often a set of instructions or list of points.

 - Put an empty line between lines not to be joined. The lines are then
   separate paragraphs.

The above should cover most situations where floating up is unwanted.


Finally a few useful tidbits that you may not know about News mode:

 - c-R can be used to hardwrap the current paragraph. It works from
   cursor position downwards so it's best to place cursor in first line.

 - cs-R reformats the entire text. Also useful when replying to a
   message where each quoted paragraph is just one long line.

 - cs-O can be used to fix broken quoting sometimes produced by foreign
   mail clients.

 - c-Return can be used to answer a point in the middle of a quoted
   paragraph (requiring the paragraph to be split but the quoting to
   be preserved).

Hopefully this makes using hardwrap a bit clearer and less annoying.
If you have any further questions then please ask.

Cheers,

Fred.

-- 
StrongED developer
http://www.stronged.iconbar.com/

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