Need plain line wrapping (as distinct from word wrapping)

jamess@concur.com · Post by **jamess@concur.com** » Thu May 19, 2005 9:11 pm

When editing long fixed-length records, I need plain line wrapping, so that if there are a lot of trailing spaces in a record, they wrap to successive display lines. This is distinct from TextPad's "word wrap" option, which shows such records as only one display line, and shows only as many trailing blanks as will fit on that display line. Plain line wrapping seems like a fundamental feature - it's the behavior of "word wrap" in Notepad! This means I have to use Notepad when editing files with long fixed-length records, and that is of course a major come-down from TextPad in all other respects.

bveldkamp · Post by **bveldkamp** » Fri May 20, 2005 6:54 am

I'm not exactly sure what you mean, maybe you could give an example?

ben_josephs · Post by **ben_josephs** » Fri May 20, 2005 8:16 am

When TextPad word-wraps, any horizontal white space (space, tab, non-breaking space (Alt-0160)) following a line-break is retained by the preceding line instead of being pushed on to the front of the next line.

Sometimes this is what you want; sometimes it isn't.

I know of no way of doing what James needs, other than by temporarily replacing all spaces with something else (such as centred dot (Alt-0183)).

bveldkamp · Post by **bveldkamp** » Fri May 20, 2005 8:27 am

If by "following" you mean "followed by", I get it (and I can reproduce it).
As a matter of fact, this has been annoying me for some time, because you can't get to the end of the line, if there are more spaces (at the end of a line) than fit on the display. So James, if you create a poll, you got my vote.

Berend

ben_josephs · Post by **ben_josephs** » Fri May 20, 2005 9:01 am

Sorry. Bad wording on my part. I meant: following the position where a line-break would be if the character following it weren't a space. Please substitute a more lucid phrase!

SteveH · Post by **SteveH** » Fri May 20, 2005 9:59 am

I also tried to get this to work with no success. Unless there are any other prefs that might affect this behaviour I thinks it's Notepad for now!

Cheers,

Steve

jamess@concur.com · Post by **jamess@concur.com** » Fri May 20, 2005 2:57 pm

Nice to see so many replies less than a day after my initial post!

For an example for bveldkamp: Starting with an empty file and "word wrap" enabled, type an "A" followed by 999 spaces, then press ENTER to start a new line and type a "B". On the first display line you see the "A" as the first character followed by spaces to its right, but nowhere near 999 of them, only as many as fit on the display line. On the second display line you see "B" as the first character. What I need is to see all 999 spaces wrapped to successive display lines before the new line with the "B". Another way to put it is: I need an option for spaces to be treated in the display exactly the same as other printable characters.

I've explored the UI thoroughtly and there is no option that provides this behavior. Substituting a different character like the centered dot (ALT-0183) as ben_josephs suggests is a workaround, but it's awkward because I would need to remember to do a global change on opening a file and again just before saving it...too much chance for human error.

I would like to know who is/are the person/people who decide which features will be incorporated in future versions of TextPad, and how to contact them directly. If anyone knows, please tell me. You can reach me directly at jamess@concur.com . Thanks.