line adjustment at the end of a sentence

[Tom Kramer]

Hello emacs help -

I understand from Óscar Fuentes that Eli Zaretskii posted a reply to my earlier email on this subject suggesting that I provide a recipe for recreating the problem. Here is a recipe and some discussion. If anyone writes a reply to this email, I hope s/he will send me a copy. I am not on the regular mailing list for emacs help. Thanks.

1. Start emacs from a command window by typing emacs -Q test

2. Type the following, which will wrap around as you type.

9/19/12 Worked 9.5 hours. Spent 1 hour misc. Spent 0.5 hour RTFI. Watched Mitutoyo vid of IMTS QIF demo. Exchanged email messages with Bob Brown.

3. Type Esc-q The paragraph is set on three lines and looks like the following:

9/19/12 Worked 9.5 hours. Spent 1 hour misc. Spent 0.5 hour
RTFI. Watched Mitutoyo vid of IMTS QIF demo. Exchanged email messages
with Bob Brown.

Note that the second line is much longer (69 characters) than the first (59 characters), and there is plenty of space for RTFI to fit on the first line.

That demonstrates the problem. To check that the problem is caused by the end of the line, copy the word
messages from the end of the second line to the end of the first line and type Esc-q again. Note that nothing
changes even though the first line is now much longer than it would have been if it ended with RTFI.

I am using emacs on Linux, but I have had exactly the same problem with other OSs.

Tom Kramer