Matt Price <matt.price@utoronto.ca> writes:

> Visual-line-mode is a replacement for longlines-mode; it soft-wraps
> text at the screen boundary, and does a much better job than
> longlines-mode did.

I think you're confused by a (helpful) conflation.

The ‘visual-lines-mode’ is indeed a replacement for ‘longlines-mode’,
but its job is to cause editing commands to act on visual, rather than
logical lines.

The wrapping behaviour you're describing is performed by ‘word-wrap’, a
buffer-local variable that cuases lines to be visually broken at word
boundaries.

The ‘word-wrap’ variable is set by ‘visual-lines-mode’, which is why
you're seeing it happen. But ‘word-wrap’ is independent of this.

> Is that what you needed? I'm not sure where the code for
> visual-line-mode lives -- there isn't a visual-line.el anywhere that i
> can find on my system.

Fortunately, ‘visual-line-mode’ appears to be a distraction from what
you're describing; Carsten only needs to learn about ‘word-wrap’.

-- 
 \        “The flattening of underwear with pleasure is the job of the |
  `\                                  chambermaid.” —hotel, Yugoslavia |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney