Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 08:14:01 +0200 From: Polytropon <freebsd@edvax.de> To: Kurt Hackenberg <kh@panix.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: freebsd vs. netbsd Message-ID: <20200612081401.f5a5c95b.freebsd@edvax.de> In-Reply-To: <b1d78ca6-f5f8-02d0-25c6-b53d21771fd6@panix.com> References: <171506d5-19aa-359e-c21d-f07257c52ebd@freenetMail.de> <ACE27C81-9437-41D6-BBD4-FA7A7B791428@kicp.uchicago.edu> <6a4f6a15-ec43-03f6-1a41-a109e445f026@anatoli.ws> <f667e8f9-b279-a3ce-3fc4-224ba17f4bbb@kicp.uchicago.edu> <00225a04-237d-9051-9aea-12c192106a20@anatoli.ws> <373EDB20-C750-42E2-A41B-EA61F6E49807@kicp.uchicago.edu> <20200609120136.00005b3c@seibercom.net> <2393a1e0-b073-950a-78be-9f57d8e9934b@anatoli.ws> <e1f6623a-3b3c-a43e-446a-d41f20f69418@kicp.uchicago.edu> <20200610063555.00003707@seibercom.net> <82F57D0D-E0EC-49F7-824E-20A296C9F549@kicp.uchicago.edu> <250b853a-b436-0e99-b05c-9abd6b6019ef@panix.com> <20200611070630.2cb42786.freebsd@edvax.de> <EA869B95-9D98-4ECC-9371-C57A0035BC32@kreme.com> <20200611075658.1dd841a9.freebsd@edvax.de> <20200611082443.0000187a@seibercom.net> <2e6c6baf-9d87-2a02-00c3-578c6630f97f@kicp.uchicago.edu> <20200611172537.2f7cdc07@archlinux> <b1d78ca6-f5f8-02d0-25c6-b53d21771fd6@panix.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Thu, 11 Jun 2020 18:42:11 -0400, Kurt Hackenberg wrote: > On 2020-06-11 11:25, Ralf Mardorf via freebsd-questions wrote: > > > There's still the issue with line wrapping. Due to the small screens of > > mobile phones and unwillingness to change the orientation of the > > phones, we suffer from the dispute of wrapping lines at around 70 or 80 > > chars vs endless lines. > Small screens, small windows on big screens, windows much wider than 80 > characters, variable-size windows. That's a real problem, and solved > cleanly, for text in some human languages, by software that > automatically fills and word-wraps text to use whatever width is available. > > But it's often done by redefining the ASCII characters carriage return > and line feed. Originally they meant, respectively, move the print head > to the left margin, and roll the paper up a line. Erm... no. The carriage return returns the _carriage_ to the first position (here: to the right), that's why it is called carriage return and not print head return. :-) On older electrical typewriters, you will see the following: +--> | | | which means exactly what you're describing: move the carriage, advance the paper. On traditional teletypes, there are distinct keys for each task, often labeled --- --- --- (three horizontal bars) for line feed, and < (chevron pointing to the left) for carriage return. With the advance of computers and video terminal units, the key symbol became | | | <---+ which describes what the _cursor_ does. Yes, I am old. ;-) > Fill-and-wrap software > often redefines the two-character sequence CRLF to mean end of > paragraph. And, of course, nothing in the text tells other software that > those characters have been redefined. And there are authors who "embed" things in paragraphs, sometimes intendedly, which leads to all this "smart logic" to collapse. In the end, you have messages with one line containing everything (including quoting prefixes). Even the best logic and heuristic approach can be fooled. :-) -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20200612081401.f5a5c95b.freebsd>