Re: Wrapping long lines (Was Re: FAQ update suggestion for "I'm having basic problems with find. Why?")

[Yitzchak Scott-Thoennes <sthoenna at efn dot org>]

On Fri, Jul 09, 2004 at 10:34:01AM +0100, William Blunn <bill--cygwin@tao-group.com> wrote:
> Brian Dessent wrote:
> > RFC2822 (which obsoletes the old RFC822) states in section 2.2.1:
> > 
> > There are two limits that this standard places on the number of
> > characters in a line. Each line of characters MUST be no more than 998
> > characters, and SHOULD be no more than 78 characters, excluding the
> > CRLF.
> 
> I am not sure this argument argues the point you think it does.
> 
> "Each line of characters MUST be no more than 998 characters, and SHOULD
> be no more than 78 characters, excluding the CRLF."
> 
> I believe that at this point they are talking about the byte stream that
> represents the encoded form of the message.
> 
> If you are using quoted-printable encoding, then all encoded lines will
> be 78 characters or less, and so will be fitting in with the "SHOULD"
> specification, i.e. the most conformant.
> 
> However, the original form of the message (what the composer sees, and
> what the reader should see) can have an arbitrarily large number of
> characters between newline characters (or between a newline and the
> start or end of the message).
> 
> So, if you are using quoted-printable, you can cheerfully do paragraphs
> as long as you like, delimited by newline characters, and still be
> perfectly within the RFCs.
> 
> > Wrapping lines at less than 80 characters is the standard accepted way
> > of sending text email.
> 
> It may be the "standard Accepted way", but you haven't actually given
> any reasons or pointers to reasons.
> 
> One could say that you are not actually arguing your case, you're just
> saying "that's the way it is, so it must be right".
> 
> > It's the least common denominator that's guaranteed to work everywhere.
> 
> I disgree.
> 
> For example (and this point has already been made) it does not work well
> on my PDA which cannot display 80 characters across the width of the
> display.
> 
> When I read a message which has the additional unnecessary linebreaks, I
> get a somewhat jerky reading because every third line is prematurely cut
> off.
> 
> If the message had been formatted into paragraphs, I would just see the
> paragraphs as the author originally wrote them.
> 
> And what problems would there be with that flowed message in other
> environments?
> 
> Every mail reader I have ever seen wraps lines.
> 
> Every web browser I have ever seen wraps lines.  The only problem here
> is that most archiving software rather unhelpfully mandates that the
> browser must not wrap at the right edge of the viewer's window.
> 
> Even a dumb mail reader, which does not even decode the quoted-printable
> will see lines of 76 or so characters with an "=" sign at the end of
> each line.
> 
> > It's just like HTML email - can I read it?  Yes.  Do I want it in my
> > inbox? Heck no.
> 
> I don't think this is valid.
> 
> If I sent you a format-flowed message, chances are your mail reader
> would wrap the lines and you wouldn't even know.
> 
> > Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.
> 
> Agreed.
> 
> But conversely, just because something has always been done in a
> particular way, doesn't mean that it should never be reviewed.
> 
> If there are logical reasons for changing, for example getting a better
> match to the conditions of a changed world, without creating backwards-
> compatibility problems, then change should be considered.

I want to know how you would format a post like yours above using flowed
format.  I honestly can't think of any way to intersperse quotes and
replies that way without picking a reasonably small width and putting
newlines in.

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