Email Line Lengths

[Steve Lamb]

Tuesday, March 28, 2000, 2:44:48 PM, Michael wrote:
> I wonder how many people that _really_ represents, world-wide, in
> these days of OS/2, Windows-Whatever, Macintosh, Acorn and
> X-Windows?

    All of which are perfectly capable of terminal level mail readers.  :P

> Indenting each line of a quote and then wrapping the resulting line to fit
> an outgoing length is what causes the erratic line lengths that Dr. Race was
> just complaining about (q.v.).

    On his non-standard display.  Do you see my lines ever do that no matter
what level of quoting they are?  :)

> messages just don't have any logical consistency. P'aps best discussed over
> a beer. After Lent.

    They do have logical consistency; here it is.  It was accepted a long time
ago that the 80 character width was the standard display.  It harms none to
have a larger display that is unused (GUI people can shrink the window and
have more screen real estate for other things) and those with less, well, can
deal with it in their own way.  So, for the ability to communicate we accept
that convention.

    A lot of the assumptions a great many email clients are built upon, a lot
of editors are built upon, a lot of the logic they are coded with are based on
that simple decision on the technical limitations of the time.  A limitation
that really doesn't need to be broken.

    Hell, you haven't brought out some of the more imaginative arguments I've
hard.  I think the best was that messages really should be, what was it, 66
characters wide because that is what books are printed to to prevent the eyes
from having to scan to far back and forth.  ;)

-- 
         Steve C. Lamb         | I'm your priest, I'm your shrink, I'm your
         ICQ: 5107343          | main connection to the switchboard of souls.
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