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Date:      Thu, 13 Jul 2000 08:58:57 +0930
From:      Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>
To:        John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.ORG>
Cc:        "Daniel C. Sobral" <dcs@newsguy.com>, Bruce Evans <bde@zeta.org.au>, cvs-committers@FreeBSD.ORG, cvs-all@FreeBSD.ORG, Mike Smith <msmith@FreeBSD.ORG>, Bill Fumerola <billf@chimesnet.com>, wsanchez@apple.com
Subject:   Wrapping mail (was: cvs commit: src/usr.bin/make arch.c buf.c compat.c cond.c di)
Message-ID:  <20000713085857.D3560@wantadilla.lemis.com>
In-Reply-To: <XFMail.000712102840.jhb@FreeBSD.org>
References:  <396CA4E7.24D3C35B@newsguy.com> <XFMail.000712102840.jhb@FreeBSD.org>

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On Wednesday, 12 July 2000 at 10:28:40 -0700, John Baldwin wrote:
>
> On 12-Jul-00 Daniel C. Sobral wrote:
>> Wilfredo S?nchez wrote:
>>>
>>> Bill:
>>>>> From rfc 1855:
>>>>
>>>>     - Don't run off the end of a line and simply let the terminal wrap;
>>>>       use a Carriage Return (CR) at the end of the line.  Also, don't
>>>>       assume your screen size is the same as everyone else's.  A good
>>>>       rule of thumb is to write out no more than 70 characters...
>>>
>>>   Sorry, don't buy it.  I write a paragraph.  How it's presented to you
>>> should be the job of your reader, not the sender.  My reader deals just
>>> fine with long lines.  In fact, if you wrap to 70, and I have a window
>>> only 50 wide, your wrapping is quite annoying, because I then get all of
>>> these newlines in mid-line for no good reason.  Assuming everyone has an
>>> 80-wide display is bogus, or at least anachronistic.
>>
>> What's your reader doing wrapping lines? It should cut them at the
>> margin and let you scroll horizontally.
>
> Ahem.  Geez.  I use a _real_ mail client which adds newlines to my
> outgoing mail and wraps incoming mail for me if needed (all
> togglable of course).  What ever happened to the notion of trying to
> accept anything you get and trying to send content that will work
> everywhere?  I thought that was kind of a basic principle in
> networking software?  As opposed to insisting that there is only One
> True Way(tm) for mail?

I've mentioned this earlier: there are different kinds of text.  Text
such as this should be wrapped round about 70 characters.  Tabular
output, log messages and such should *not* be wrapped, because that's
not the normal way they appear.  Instead, I have a window with 120
characters which fits nicely onto the screen and allows me to view
most such messages without wrapping.  When I receive
one-line-per-paragraph messages, they wrap OK (apart from an
irritating reverse-video + sign at the beginning of the
continuations), but they're 120 characters wide.

Greg
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