I use w3m on ubuntu 9.10. I can access my gmail fine (tip, when you get the loop with cookies try deleting the url up to mail.google.com and presto, a screen appears which allows you to choose html mode - <if you try it in google docs apparently you're breaking intergalactic law!>).

But no matter what I do, I can't stop w3m adding hard breaks to my email messages. At first I thought it was nano and so I spent quite some time trying to get nano to softwrap And now nano works great (no spurious hard-wraps) but my emails from w3m still have them. I tried it with gedit as the editor (o for options) and no luck. [Fold line in text area] does make the sentences wrap nicely in the text entry box (try it and see) but still the text comes out wonky.

I really don't know why I am spending so long on getting the text to be hard-wrap free, but I've set myself the challenge...

Any ideas?

Could the problem be with the terminal app (I use gnome-terminal). I have just tried it in mrxvt and got the same behaviour. Does that mean that the issue is with w3m? I also tested out lynx, but it seemed to do the same thing.

I honestly don't get enough emails to set up mutt. I would just like to send out emails without hard breaks in them. No ideas at all?

The more I investigate, the more I feel this is an issue with gmail, not w3m (sorry for casting the aspersion). I am writing this post inside a screen session, inside w3m over ssh and I bet it will wrap fine. In that case, do you recommend setting up something like Mutt to get around the problem?

Consider this solved. I have set up mutt and I'm getting wrapping behaviour as expected.