by Dennis G. Allard<allard@oceanpark.com>,
- revised -

Some people experience poor behavior of word wrapping when they read
plain text email in Mozilla Mail or Netscape 7 Mail.  My particular
case is documented here.

After I set up Red Hat 8.0, I decided to use Mozilla Mail, since I
have been using the venerable Netscape Mail client for many years and
Mozilla is the direct descendent of that program.

I compose using plain text (non-HTML) with word wrap set to column 72.
The word wrap *appeared* to be fine in the composition window but the
sent message would arrive containing long lines, as if newlines
created by wrapping were undone!  Only hard newlines that I actually
entered manually were properly displayed.

This was very frustrating.

I found the solution for this at Holger Metzger's excellent site:

  http://www.hmetzger.de/etips6.html#32

In my case (Mozilla 3.1, Red Hat 8.0 Linux), I modified the file

  $HOME/.mozilla/allard/2mts22os.slt/prefs.js

I added the following line:

  user_pref("mailnews.display.disable_format_flowed_support", true);

That worked!  My emails now appear correctly exactly as they appeared
when I composed them.

Note 1:  Edit the prefs.js file *after* closing Mozialla browser and
Mail, since if you edit it first then close those applications, they
may overwrite the file with the old values.

Note 2: After you start Mozilla Mail with the new setting and the
close Mozilla, you will find that the prefs.js file may have been
rewritten and the line containing disable_format_flowed_support
repositioned in the file.

Note 3: You may need to search for your prefs.js file, since I think
that the directory structure beneath $HOME/.mozilla includes some
generated directory names such as 2mtx22os.slt which may be different
for your installation.

Note 4: The file I modifed for Mozilla, prefs.js, does not have the
same precise name as the file mentioned in Metzger's FAQ, user.js,
which I gather is the analog in Netscape 7.  So, presumably, if you
got to this post in search of a solution to this problem for Netscape
7, you should try modifying user.js.

Note 5: You can locate the exact location of your prefs.js file by
doing the following (assuming you are using a bash compatible shell):

  cd $HOME
  find . -name "*.js"