On Wed, 24 Apr 1996 10:36:42 -0700 Thomas Harmon said:
>Is it just me (and my Netscape 2.01) mail reader, or are others having trouble
>with
>incoming messages running of the right edge of the screen? It is annoying to
>have to
>scroll right and left to read messages and if I print them the lines are just
>truncated.
 
Well, ironically your message wrapped on my screen <grin>.  This is a problem
with "newfangled mail clients" -- some screw up outgoing text, others
incoming text, still others both.
 
The proper netiquette dictates that you use a fixed pitch font with a maximum
line length of 80, and place "hard returns" at the end of every line.  If you
use a proportional font, you can't judge line length by screen/window width
and any tabular information won't line up.  If you don't use hard returns
some mail programs won't break up the line on transmission.  Netscape does
insert the returns, but breaks the lines when the text wraps in your window
so you can send lines that are too long.  Not all mail agents understand
tabs.  Some mail agents try to format incoming mail to fit your current
window and may thus break up tabular information or bulleted lists.  The
list goes on but I'll stop here.
 
Check into settings/options/INI entries/whatever for your mail client and
try to force it to operate as stated above (80 bytes or less, etc).  For
Netscape you can select a fixed-pitch font for the mail window, and by
sizing it properly you can get it to generate 80 bytes max per line.  If
there are any OpenMail GUI client users out there, ODGUI.INI has an entry:
 
[Application Settings]
TextWidth=78
 
I keep mine "a little less than 80" so quoted replies don't wrap as much.
 
Jeff Kell <[log in to unmask]>