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                           Using External Editors


     Like  all  message  editors  that  allows  the use of external text
     editors for writing messages, GoldED must deal with the problem  of
     free-flowing text paragraphs versus hard-cr-terminated lines.

     Most text editors terminate *all* lines with a carriage return (CR,
     13d, 0Dh). Unless you use a  fairly short right margin in the  text
     editor,  those  lines  can  be  very  annoying  to  quote  if   the
     quotemargin is  shorter. This  usually results  in "ragged" quotes,
     with a long quoteline alternating with a short leftover. This looks
     bad, and requires a lot of work to edit to a respectable shape.

     To solve this problem, GoldED treats the file from the text just as
     if text blocks  doesn't have any  hard-cr's in them  - it "reflows"
     the text. Of course,  this immediately creates another  problem: If
     you include  a cut  from a  log file,  source code,  table or other
     stuff that  *requires* the  text block  to be  aligned with itself.
     Those blocks would become scrambled and unreadable.

     GoldED  recognizes  a  special  control  string,  that  tells   the
     reflowing code to put hard-cr's on single lines or groups of lines.
     You  define  the  string  with   the  keyword  "Hardline"  in   the
     configuration file. Here is an  example of the use of  the hardline
     string (in the example "<<"):

          <<
          ==== Log Cut ====
          + 22.24.31  Event 0-@
          - 22.24.42  Preparing outbound mail
          = 22.58.47  RING
          = 22.58.55  CONNECT 2400
          + 22.59.02  Incoming call at 2400 baud
          ==== Log Cut ====
          <<

     In this example, the hardline string on the lines before and  after
     the  cutting  tells  the  reflower  that  all  those lines must the
     hard-cr terminated. The hardline string must be the only characters
     on the line,  and it must  be placed on  the *first* position.  The
     reflow code looks for <string><cr>. The hardline string works as  a
     "toggle".

     The hardline string also has another use: If you put the string  as
     the  last  characters  on  a  line,  that line will also be hard-cr
     terminated.

        Example:

          Greetings...<<
            Odinn Sorensen<<

     The last  << in  this example  was not  really necessary, because a
     blank  line  always  ends  the  preceding  line or paragraph with a
     hard-cr. In any  case, the hardline  string is stripped  off before
     the message is saved.

     Some lines are  by definition always  hard-cr terminated, and  does
     not need hardline strings. Those lines are quoted lines and control
     lines  such  as  kludges,  tearlines  and originlines. In addition,
     three  identical  characters  at  the  beginning  of  a  line  also
     terminates the preceding paragraph.