Text wrapping when reading through archives

[Andy Rudoff]

jeffrey atkisson wrote:
> Does anyone know what to do about reading archive posts that don't
> "wrap" (I think thats what you call it ...)

I don't have a great answer for this.  It is caused by the Mailman list
software trying to be helpful and putting "pre" tags around the message
when you view it in the archives.  A "pre" tag is meant to "preserve" the
line breaks so that you see only the line breaks actually entered by the
poster.  This is probably the wrong way for Mailman to work since so many
mail readers wrap the long lines and many people are used to sending
messages where they hit return only at the end of paragraphs.

Here's a workaround that might help a little.  It isn't a great fix, sorta
like fixing a broken piano string by tying it back together rather than
replacing it :-)

In Firefox, choose Bookmarks->Organize Bookmarks... then click New Bookmark...

Name the new bookmark something like "Remove Pre" and in the Location field
put this ugly string:

javascript:(document.body.innerHTML = document.body.innerHTML.replace(/<pre>/i,'<p>'))();


Then, when you view one of those archive pages with the long lines, select the
bookmark and the long lines should wrap to the size of your browser window.

If you put the bookmark in your "Bookmarks Toolbar Folder" then you can click
it easily without having to pull down any menus.

This should work for Internet Explorer too, although as far as I can tell you have
to first create a bookmark (to any page) and then modify the name and location of
the existing bookmark as I describe above.

I have not tried javascript bookmarks in Safari, but I bet they work similarly.

Hope this helps,

-andy