Email Line Lengths

[Simon Bowring]

>Well, anyway, that's how I'd answer were I in a debating society. 
i.e. "if you were playing games"! Well, this is how I would answer
your "pretend" arguments, with real heart-felt based on the 
real-world arguments and years of internet use!

>"Broken" quoting is ill-defined
Oh no it isn't ;-)

>I'm kind of inclined to see that as a failure of the mail client
..and so all these (largely Unix and mainframe) users just don't
matter?

>>3. The many mailers that will wrap the text that you send means
>>   that oddly formatted, hard to read lines are produced like:
>On third or fourth resending, maybe, but this isn't the fault of my >original format.

No, on the first sending, and yes it is the fault of your formatting!

>This has long been an unusable convention, killed off by mail clients that 
>use proportionately spaced fonts. There are better ways to do it, anyway, 
>if one allows HTML coding in mail messages. 

Ok, use a proportional font, but you can forget about having *any* control
of the text layout that people will see.  Sure, it doesn't *always*
matter, but it can do.  If you use a proportional font, you can't align
*anything* vertically, EXCEPT in the very first column (there are no 
tabs in email).

8.8.1.  This is a heading
     
        This is an indented paragraph the "T" in the first "This" is
        aligned with the "T" in the heading.

9.0     THIS IS A HEADING, TOO
        ----------------------

        fig 1. Figures for 1999

                          1000.00
                         10000.00
                        100000.00
                        ---------
                        111000.00


This is guaranteed to line up properly with a non-proportional
font (as God intended).  With a non-proportional font, you would
have to use the exact same font (since proportional font metrics
all vary), and since the font information is not (and cannot) be
passed to the remote mail program, the recipient will not be able
to make it line up.

If you had originated the above aligned text using a proportional
font, it would appear to line up ONLY on your screen.  Anyone
using a different proportional font or any non-proprotional font,
would not be able to make it line up at all.
    
>Oh, no, wait.... that's a bad >thing, I forgot. :)
It's just an un-thoughtout impossible mess, with no standards
to decide how it should work, there could be no internet if 
internet software "worked" this way!

Sorry, but I'm beginning to dispair of the "I'm alright Jack" 
attitude of so many (most?) internet users, it actually depresses 
me that people are either unwilling to accept or unable to
understand that compromises have to made to fit in with an
existing community and to enable the internet to work across 
multiple disparate systems.

I read your response as, "I don't suffer from these problems and
issues, so why should I care if others do?", but perhaps I'm
being unkind, perhaps you really don't understand?

Unless you really don't understand, I find your attitude discourtious 
at best, and damned bloody minded and rude at worst.

I know I can also be damned bloody minded and rude as well, but it's 
only in response to the apparent rudeness of others (whether intended 
or out of ignorance).

Regards and no offence intended,

Simon