From: elliottcable <me@...>
Date: 2008-08-14T08:08:10+09:00
Subject: Re: script for wrapping and unwrapping text?

I was working on something similar to this last night - it may be able  
to help you.

My requirements are slightly different - I wanted something that would  
wrap text to a given terminal size for a IM/IRC client I am writing -  
my requirements are that wrapped text 'look' good (i.e. not break  
words unless absolutely necessary, not leave mostly-blank lines due to  
a really long 'word' [URL/links/code strings/whatever], and not screw  
with existing whitespace if you're pasting code or something into a  
chat).

I wrote a little library in the process that 'intelligently' splits a  
string into an array of words, allowing me to include Enumerable into  
String. Called it StringRay (I know, retarded... sorry), you can check  
it out here: http://github.com/elliottcable/stringray

The actual wrapping code is available here - you'll need to gem  
install stringray and include it into class String to use this:
http://github.com/elliottcable/rat/tree/master/lib/rat/core_ext/string.rb#L28-80

(That's a direct link - if you're reading this in the archives, the  
line number references have probably changed. The link may no longer  
be applicable either.)

On Aug 13, 2008, at 10:02 AM, Daniel Choi wrote:

>
> I'm interested in storing, say, wiki pages as flat files that can be
> edited with Vim or Emacs and also processed with line-based unix text
> tools and version control systems like Git. All these tools work much
> better with linebreaks after every line of text. For example, diffs
> are much easier to deal with when a text file has line breaks after
> every line of text.
>
> But it's awkward to edit these same files through a textarea on a
> webpage with all the line breaks. Is there a good Ruby tool or script
> that can convert a text file written in, say Markdown or Asciidoc,
> into a version that removes the line breaks for editing in a browser
> textarea and then reinserts them on the update?
>
> The problem is complicated a bit by the fact that you might want to
> preserve line breaks in some parts of a Markdown or Asciidoc document,
> like where you have a bulleted list. But you would want to wrap and
> unwrap flowing text in a paragraph or in an item of a list.
>
>