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Wrap no linger working

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  Wrap no linger working "J. P. Gilliver" <G6JPG@255soft.uk> - 2026-08-03 22:12 +0100
    Re: Wrap no linger working Nobody <jock@soccer.com> - 2026-08-03 14:49 -0700
      Re: Wrap no linger working Nobody <jock@soccer.com> - 2026-08-03 14:52 -0700
    Re: Wrap no linger working Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> - 2026-08-03 18:06 -0400
      Re: Wrap no linger working "J. P. Gilliver" <G6JPG@255soft.uk> - 2026-08-04 01:15 +0100
        Re: Wrap no linger working Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> - 2026-08-03 22:21 -0400
          Re: Wrap no linger working "J. P. Gilliver" <G6JPG@255soft.uk> - 2026-08-04 04:14 +0100
            Re: Wrap no linger working Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> - 2026-08-04 00:47 -0400
              Re: Wrap no linger working "J. P. Gilliver" <G6JPG@255soft.uk> - 2026-08-04 12:21 +0100
            Re: Wrap no linger working Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> - 2026-08-04 09:02 +0100
              Re: Wrap no linger working "J. P. Gilliver" <G6JPG@255soft.uk> - 2026-08-04 12:28 +0100
    Re: Wrap no linger working Frank Miller <miller@posteo.ee> - 2026-08-04 06:27 +0200

#21650 — Wrap no linger working

I'm on "153.0.1esr (64-bit)" - updated in last week or so.

Looking at an email I last looked at a week or more ago, I now have to
scroll left and right to read the text blocks in it - and I didn't have
to last time I looked at it. I can't remember - I might have had to
scroll to /find/ the text blocks (it's an atrociously-formatted email -
an OB newsletter), but at least once I'd found the text, it wrapped
within the window. Now, even when I've found the text, the lines just
disappear off to the right such that I have to scroll to read them -
even with TB maximised and the email opened in a tab of its own so it
gets all the width going.

I'm not /aware/ of having altered any settings when I did the upgrade
(i. e. let TB do it).
-- 
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

"Galbraith's Law of Human Nature: Faced with the choice between
changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost
everybody gets busy on the proof." - John Kenneth Galbraith

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#21651

On Mon, 3 Aug 2026 22:12:30 +0100, "J. P. Gilliver" <G6JPG@255soft.uk>
wrote:

>I'm on "153.0.1esr (64-bit)" - updated in last week or so.
>
>Looking at an email I last looked at a week or more ago, I now have to
>scroll left and right to read the text blocks in it.
>
>I'm not /aware/ of having altered any settings when I did the upgrade
>(i. e. let TB do it).

Have you checked about:config with "mail.wrap_long_lines" to see
whether the default 'true' has been changed?

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#21652

On Mon, 03 Aug 2026 14:49:52 -0700, Nobody <jock@soccer.com> wrote:

>On Mon, 3 Aug 2026 22:12:30 +0100, "J. P. Gilliver" <G6JPG@255soft.uk>
>wrote:
>
>>I'm on "153.0.1esr (64-bit)" - updated in last week or so.
>>
>>Looking at an email I last looked at a week or more ago, I now have to
>>scroll left and right to read the text blocks in it.
>>
>>I'm not /aware/ of having altered any settings when I did the upgrade
>>(i. e. let TB do it).
>
>Have you checked about:config with "mail.wrap_long_lines" to see
>whether the default 'true' has been changed?

And "plain_text.wrap_long_lines" as well?

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#21653

On Mon, 8/3/2026 5:12 PM, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
> I'm on "153.0.1esr (64-bit)" - updated in last week or so.
> 
> Looking at an email I last looked at a week or more ago, I now have to
> scroll left and right to read the text blocks in it - and I didn't have
> to last time I looked at it. I can't remember - I might have had to
> scroll to /find/ the text blocks (it's an atrociously-formatted email -
> an OB newsletter), but at least once I'd found the text, it wrapped
> within the window. Now, even when I've found the text, the lines just
> disappear off to the right such that I have to scroll to read them -
> even with TB maximised and the email opened in a tab of its own so it
> gets all the width going.
> 
> I'm not /aware/ of having altered any settings when I did the upgrade
> (i. e. let TB do it).
> 

Micky thread. Likely Non-Breaking Spaces.
The Non-Breaking Spaces tell the text handling
software to ignore the normal rules and
not break the line, causing the user to have
to scroll to the right. Every word is separated from
the word next to it, by a Non Breaking Space.

Tell the idiot making the newsletter to stop doing that :-)

Just make normal text with 0x20 spaces, you know, like
humans used to do. We're not living in an "evil version
of a typesetting factory". There is no reason to make
everything we (attempt) to read, into a fucking
Chinese Puzzle. (I have some web pages that expect
me to deal with this.)

*******

When you see a puzzle like this, use your Hex Editor for a first look.
Save out the item, into a separate .eml file or whatever, then
use the hex editor (HxD) on it.

The second item (as nobody likes a pure diet of hex editors), is this.

I'm glad I found this, purely by accident.

It dumps out one line per Unicode character, and there you can
check for the Non Breaking Spaces in that right-hand column and
see if that is related to the issue (or not).

   https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/questing/man1/uniname.1.html

 character  byte       UTF-32   encoded as     glyph  name
       110        178  00043F   D0 BF          п      CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER PE
       111        180  000440   D1 80          р      CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER ER
       112        182  00043E   D0 BE          о      CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER O

I don't know if there is a Windows version, or a Cygwin port of that.
Building that from source (I don't have the source), I would expect
there is some metadata that program needs. And that could be a
decent sized file and that information is release controlled
(like "version 15 of Unicode" or whatever). But you should keep
such a utility close to hand in the future, because there will
be more of these puzzles to investigate. Such utilities can't decode
everything.

As a well-trained forensics expert, this should take you no
time at all to figure out :-) We're all pulling for ya.
Thank you, Mister Unicode, where ever you are.

   Paul

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#21656

On 2026/8/3 23:6:26, Paul wrote:
> On Mon, 8/3/2026 5:12 PM, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
>> I'm on "153.0.1esr (64-bit)" - updated in last week or so.
>>
>> Looking at an email I last looked at a week or more ago, I now have to
>> scroll left and right to read the text blocks in it - and I didn't have
>> to last time I looked at it. I can't remember - I might have had to
>> scroll to /find/ the text blocks (it's an atrociously-formatted email -
>> an OB newsletter), but at least once I'd found the text, it wrapped
>> within the window. Now, even when I've found the text, the lines just
>> disappear off to the right such that I have to scroll to read them -
>> even with TB maximised and the email opened in a tab of its own so it
>> gets all the width going.
>>
>> I'm not /aware/ of having altered any settings when I did the upgrade
>> (i. e. let TB do it).
>>
> 
> Micky thread. Likely Non-Breaking Spaces.
> The Non-Breaking Spaces tell the text handling
> software to ignore the normal rules and
> not break the line, causing the user to have
> to scroll to the right. Every word is separated from
> the word next to it, by a Non Breaking Space.
> 
> Tell the idiot making the newsletter to stop doing that :-)

Yes, I know all that, and totally agree with you; web pages, in
particular, have reverted to fixed-format, non-wrapping text, contrary
to what HTML was supposed to do.

But that doesn't alter the fact that THUNDERBIRD USED TO DISPLAY IT
PROPERLY, AND NOW DOESN'T. THE *SAME* EMAIL (it's in my Inbox, or rather
a subdirectory thereof, named BCS [for the school]). (OK, "properly" is
arguable - since it was [is] badly formatted in the first place, maybe
it /should/ not display it /usably/. But it did, and now doesn't - hence
my posting this _here_.)

> 
> Just make normal text with 0x20 spaces, you know, like
> humans used to do. We're not living in an "evil version
> of a typesetting factory". There is no reason to make
> everything we (attempt) to read, into a fucking
> Chinese Puzzle. (I have some web pages that expect
> me to deal with this.)

Again, I share your frustration.>
> *******
> 
> When you see a puzzle like this, use your Hex Editor for a first look.
> Save out the item, into a separate .eml file or whatever, then
> use the hex editor (HxD) on it.

My chance of getting the newsletter writer to change his or her
behaviour is near zero; even explaining the problem to them would be a
very uphill task. But TB used to display it at least _usably_, and now
doesn't - or at least, less so. In other words, TB parsed
badly-formatted text better than it now does.

[Rest was over my head, but it's _TB_ that has - I could say
deteriorated, I could say "improved" by being less tolerant of bad "code".
-- 
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

There are two kinds of fool. One says, "This is old, and therefore
good." And one says, "This is new, and therefore better."
-John Brunner, science fiction writer (1934-1995)

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#21658

On Mon, 8/3/2026 8:15 PM, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
> On 2026/8/3 23:6:26, Paul wrote:
>> On Mon, 8/3/2026 5:12 PM, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
>>> I'm on "153.0.1esr (64-bit)" - updated in last week or so.
>>>
>>> Looking at an email I last looked at a week or more ago, I now have to
>>> scroll left and right to read the text blocks in it - and I didn't have
>>> to last time I looked at it. I can't remember - I might have had to
>>> scroll to /find/ the text blocks (it's an atrociously-formatted email -
>>> an OB newsletter), but at least once I'd found the text, it wrapped
>>> within the window. Now, even when I've found the text, the lines just
>>> disappear off to the right such that I have to scroll to read them -
>>> even with TB maximised and the email opened in a tab of its own so it
>>> gets all the width going.
>>>
>>> I'm not /aware/ of having altered any settings when I did the upgrade
>>> (i. e. let TB do it).
>>>
>>
>> Micky thread. Likely Non-Breaking Spaces.
>> The Non-Breaking Spaces tell the text handling
>> software to ignore the normal rules and
>> not break the line, causing the user to have
>> to scroll to the right. Every word is separated from
>> the word next to it, by a Non Breaking Space.
>>
>> Tell the idiot making the newsletter to stop doing that :-)
> 
> Yes, I know all that, and totally agree with you; web pages, in
> particular, have reverted to fixed-format, non-wrapping text, contrary
> to what HTML was supposed to do.
> 
> But that doesn't alter the fact that THUNDERBIRD USED TO DISPLAY IT
> PROPERLY, AND NOW DOESN'T. THE *SAME* EMAIL (it's in my Inbox, or rather
> a subdirectory thereof, named BCS [for the school]). (OK, "properly" is
> arguable - since it was [is] badly formatted in the first place, maybe
> it /should/ not display it /usably/. But it did, and now doesn't - hence
> my posting this _here_.)
> 
>>
>> Just make normal text with 0x20 spaces, you know, like
>> humans used to do. We're not living in an "evil version
>> of a typesetting factory". There is no reason to make
>> everything we (attempt) to read, into a fucking
>> Chinese Puzzle. (I have some web pages that expect
>> me to deal with this.)
> 
> Again, I share your frustration.>
>> *******
>>
>> When you see a puzzle like this, use your Hex Editor for a first look.
>> Save out the item, into a separate .eml file or whatever, then
>> use the hex editor (HxD) on it.
> 
> My chance of getting the newsletter writer to change his or her
> behaviour is near zero; even explaining the problem to them would be a
> very uphill task. But TB used to display it at least _usably_, and now
> doesn't - or at least, less so. In other words, TB parsed
> badly-formatted text better than it now does.
> 
> [Rest was over my head, but it's _TB_ that has - I could say
> deteriorated, I could say "improved" by being less tolerant of bad "code".
> 

So it's an email, it is MIME encoded ? And the
newsletter is an attachment or is it part of the
body text ?

Tell us more about the composition and parts of
it, what they're made of.

   Paul

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#21660

On 2026/8/4 3:21:43, Paul wrote:
> On Mon, 8/3/2026 8:15 PM, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
[]
> So it's an email, it is MIME encoded ? And the

The header includes the line "MIME-Version: 1.0". (It may include others
- that's the one I spotted.)

> newsletter is an attachment or is it part of the
> body text ?

Part of the body text.>
> Tell us more about the composition and parts of
> it, what they're made of.

Blocks of text, and images. The text is in various colours and on
various backgrounds.>
>    Paul

It starts "To view this email in your browser or download as a pdf click
here", where "click here" links to
https://eu.ptly.com/API/Communication.aspx?mode=showMessage&site=uk/bcs&item_id=18681_4AWT6&dbid=7671
(how much of that is needed, and whether it identifies me, I don't know,
but I don't mind).

(It's a world I no longer have much connection with; seems to involve
lots of rich people!)

Looking at that link, it appears fairly well-behaved, though a rather
odd (narrow strip) format. Looked at in the email, the blocks of text
are somewhat moved about horizontally - in particular, the one that
starts SAVE THE DATE in capitals (just below the bit that starts
"Thursday, June 10th") is off the right margin of my TB window.
-- 
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

It is important to write so that you can be understood.  It is far more
important to write so that you cannot be misunderstood.

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#21662

On Mon, 8/3/2026 11:14 PM, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
> On 2026/8/4 3:21:43, Paul wrote:
>> On Mon, 8/3/2026 8:15 PM, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
> []
>> So it's an email, it is MIME encoded ? And the
> 
> The header includes the line "MIME-Version: 1.0". (It may include others
> - that's the one I spotted.)
> 
>> newsletter is an attachment or is it part of the
>> body text ?
> 
> Part of the body text.>
>> Tell us more about the composition and parts of
>> it, what they're made of.
> 
> Blocks of text, and images. The text is in various colours and on
> various backgrounds.>
>>    Paul
> 
> It starts "To view this email in your browser or download as a pdf click
> here", where "click here" links to
> https://eu.ptly.com/API/Communication.aspx?mode=showMessage&site=uk/bcs&item_id=18681_4AWT6&dbid=7671
> (how much of that is needed, and whether it identifies me, I don't know,
> but I don't mind).
> 
> (It's a world I no longer have much connection with; seems to involve
> lots of rich people!)
> 
> Looking at that link, it appears fairly well-behaved, though a rather
> odd (narrow strip) format. Looked at in the email, the blocks of text
> are somewhat moved about horizontally - in particular, the one that
> starts SAVE THE DATE in capitals (just below the bit that starts
> "Thursday, June 10th") is off the right margin of my TB window.
> 

The top of

Name: Communication.aspx.html
Size: 220591 bytes (215 KiB)
SHA1: BBC20EA97D6A8DE68EEC007810511A6DD32E379C

talks of displaying the content with a width of "device-width",
but perhaps that is device-width of A4 paper or something. The
result is a relatively narrow web browser display when you're
on a wide display device.

*******

Tuesday, May 12th - 19th: Hong Kong Week
We are delighted to be coming to Hong Kong for a week of social engagements.
   <=== C2 A0     NO-BREAK SPACE

That only upsets the layout a tiny bit.

Some of the lines of input are continuous ones which wrap
at device-width as the declaration at the top spells out.
Such lines don't tend to have the NO-BREAK SPACE. But other
lines do have the odd one, for reasons that are unclear.
There are a smattering of those 0xC2 0xA0 ones. Could they upset
the layout. I expect so.

When viewing that in Firefox, nothing shoots off to the side, and the
NO-BREAK SPACE creates a tiny blemish but nothing of note.

So if you're seeing this rendered locally in Thunderbird, because
this same HTML is a MIME attachment or something, then perhaps
there are some additional alterations to the version you've got ?

I used the "uniname" utility to detect the NO-BREAK SPACE.

   Paul

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#21665

Brief summary: EXTEREMELY sloppy emailing of the newsletters, which
someone has finally noticed and remedied.

You can abandon this thread, as the change in how Thunderbird presents
the text is obviously only a minor matter! I've included some analysis
for interest - please feel free to ignore.

I've had to mangle this as otherwise something called "Spamasassin"
rejected this post! I'll try inserting some "### "s. No, THAT didn't
work; I'll try mangling some words, e. g. changing Content to innards:
no, that didn't work. I'll try changing ---- to ^^^^: no. OK, I'll try
changing the coded lines to "(long line of characters)": no! OK, I'll
change NextPart to NxPt: no! boundary to edge:

Wow, that SpamAssassin is vicious! I've saved a draft, and will now
replace the sections with descriptions in {}s:

On 2026/8/4 5:47:28, Paul wrote:
> On Mon, 8/3/2026 11:14 PM, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
[]
>> It starts "To view this email in your browser or download as a pdf click
>> here", where "click here" links to
>>
https://eu.ptly.com/API/Communication.aspx?mode=showMessage&site=uk/bcs&item_id=18681_4AWT6&dbid=7671
>> (how much of that is needed, and whether it identifies me, I don't know,
>> but I don't mind).
>>
>> (It's a world I no longer have much connection with; seems to involve
>> lots of rich people!)
>>
>> Looking at that link, it appears fairly well-behaved, though a rather
>> odd (narrow strip) format. Looked at in the email, the blocks of text
>> are somewhat moved about horizontally - in particular, the one that
>> starts SAVE THE DATE in capitals (just below the bit that starts
>> "Thursday, June 10th") is off the right margin of my TB window.
>>
>
> The top of
>
> Name: Communication.aspx.html
> Size: 220591 bytes (215 KiB)
> SHA1: BBC20EA97D6A8DE68EEC007810511A6DD32E379C
>
> talks of displaying the content with a width of "device-width",
> but perhaps that is device-width of A4 paper or something. The
> result is a relatively narrow web browser display when you're
> on a wide display device.
>
Not particularly wide; my screen is 1920 by 1080, and my Edge window
is about three-quarters that width. It (the provided link, not the
email) seems to be in a centred column, about the width of the header
images, the first two of which (the logo and the Christmas picture) seem
to be 895 and 854 pixels wide.[]
> So if you're seeing this rendered locally in Thunderbird, because
> this same HTML is a MIME attachment or something, then perhaps
> there are some additional alterations to the version you've got ?
>
> I used the "uniname" utility to detect the NO-BREAK SPACE.
>
>    Paul
>
>
Using Thunderbird's View Source function:

after the headers, I see (the === lines are mine):
===
### {saying its lots of parts mimed}

### {header of type alternative}


### {header saying encoding type}
===
followed, after many (apparently) blank lines, by the "To view this
email in your browser or download as a pdf click here" line (with no
link), followed by the text parts of the newsletter, with long gaps
between which presumably correspond to the images; the text is in blocks
with very long lines (probably whole paragraphs each).

Then (again I've added the ===):
===
Please click here <
https://thebarnardiansociety.org.uk/?ref_no=5389543&action=optout&field=dontList&O_MID=18539_DX9XZQM7S3&MID=18681_4AWT6&subject=Christmas%20OB%20Newsletter
>  to unsubscribe from these emails.

### {header saying HTML}

### {first line of HTML}
===
then lots of HTML (the typical bloated HTML that poor machine-generation
creates - lots of <table> and <div> tags). Interestingly, the strings
"<img" and "img src" are not in it anywhere. Buried among the HTML -
though only a tiny proportion! - are the blocks of text.

ending thus:
===
### {last line of HTML}

### {NxPt}

### {jpeg}

### (long line of characters)

### (long line of characters)

### (long line of characters)
===
The rest of the email - I'd say easily 97% if not more of it - consisted
of lines of characters. I'm holding Page Down, and it's taking
minutes to get through this! Oh, giving up, and dragging the scrollbar
thumb - the email ends:

===
### (long line of characters)

### (long line of characters)

### (long line of characters)

### {NxPt}
===
Looking back at Thunderbird's email list, the email is 8.3 MB - no
wonder! And the Jan, March, and April ones are 20.4, 26.3, and 36.8 MB
respectively! Interestingly, May and July are only 275 and 263 kB; I
hadn't noticed any change in how the newsletters look to me, but someone
at BCS must have finally noticed! Using View Source on the July one: the
text-only (with big gaps) part is there, and an HTML part, but the email
ends
===
### {last line of HTML}

### {NxPt}


### {NxPt}
===
, i. e. there isn't the huge section of encoded lines. This time the
HTML part does include lots of <img> tags, with sources of web addresses.

Looks like the emails - at least the Christmas and probably up to April
- contained the content in three blocks:
1. Plain text (well, sort of)
2. HTML
3. the images, encoded

and the last one doesn't have the third part but instead links to online
images.
-- 
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

        _
       / )
___   / /__
   |-'    _)
   |      _)
   |      _)
___|-.____)

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#21664

J. P. Gilliver wrote:

> It starts "To view this email in your browser or download as a pdf click
> here", where "click here" links to
> https://eu.ptly.com/API/Communication.aspx?mode=showMessage&site=uk/ 
> bcs&item_id=18681_4AWT6&dbid=7671

So it's not a plain text email, it's a html document, the author wants 
it formatted to the nth degree how *they* see fit, not for it to flow on 
your screen as you might prefer to see it ...

Within TB you could try the different "View > Message Body as" options 
but all bets are off.

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#21666

On 2026/8/4 9:2:47, Andy Burns wrote:
> J. P. Gilliver wrote:
> 
>> It starts "To view this email in your browser or download as a pdf click
>> here", where "click here" links to
>> https://eu.ptly.com/API/Communication.aspx?mode=showMessage&site=uk/ 
>> bcs&item_id=18681_4AWT6&dbid=7671
> 
> So it's not a plain text email, it's a html document, the author wants 
> it formatted to the nth degree how *they* see fit, not for it to flow on 
> your screen as you might prefer to see it ...

See my reply to Paul (which took a huge amount of hacking to post; kept
objecting to the bits I'd quoted!).>
> Within TB you could try the different "View > Message Body as" options 
> but all bets are off.

Thanks. It was set to "Original HTML". Changing that to "Simple HTML"
changed it; I won't say improved, but at least less horizontal scrolling
was needed, and in particular I could see at least the start of the line
I couldn't see before. Just out of curiosity, I tried Plain Text, and
that rendered it as text - with huge gaps between chunks - and 52
attachments (of the pictures).

-- 
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Quantum particles: the dreams that stuff is made of - David Moser

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#21661

J. P. Gilliver wrote:
> I'm on "153.0.1esr (64-bit)" - updated in last week or so.
> 
> Looking at an email I last looked at a week or more ago, I now have to
> scroll left and right to read the text blocks in it - and I didn't have
> to last time I looked at it.
[..snip..]

What about if you set your view to "plain text" or "simplified HTML"?

If that doesn't help you could try to combine that with the following
snippet of code in your userContent.css:

.moz-text-flowed, .moz-text-plain, .moz-text-html {
    max-width: 82ch !important; }

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