CFOG's PIP, May 1988, Volume 7 No. 3, Whole No. 65, page 38
Reformatting with VDE and Indented Margins
by Eric Meyer
[Sometimes I use VDE with indented margins. This is common for quotations in legal briefs and other documents. There's a minor problem. Eric Meyer explains the problem and how VDE tries to cope with it in a message left on the CFOG II RCPM. -- bhc]
Reformatting with left margin [other than 1] will sometimes catch you offguard because VDE has to guess at the indentation. The rule is simple, but often forgotten if the line where you press [CTRL]B is indented relative to the following line, that difference is assumed to be the paragraph indentation, and except for that everything formats to the new left margin. So if the current line begins in column 10 and the next line begins in column 5 and you set the margin at 20 and reformat, you'll still have a 5-character indent from the margin at 20. Clear as mud?
[Conclusion: VDE works fine when you simply change indented margins and reformat, but will give you unintended results when you edit an indented paragraph and reformat. To prevent this, you need to delete the existing offset. -- bhc]