[mdlug] (no subject)

[David Favro]

Aaron Kulkis wrote:
> There's a reason why newspapers don't print their stories on
> lines the entire width of the newsprint....because it's very
> difficult to read long lines (you lose your place when
> you reach the end of super-long lines on the "return scan"
> to the beginning of the next line.
>   
Yes, but newspapers are print media that can't rewrap lines for you. 
The analogy is meaningless.  No one is suggesting that if someone writes
you an email with a 2000-character long paragraph that isn't pre-wrapped
to 76-character lines, you should horizontally scroll through a single
2000-character line; rather that you use a MUA that is capable of
re-wrapping lines to *your* preferred reading width.  That can't be done
with a print newspaper without a lot of scissors and tape.  If, OTOH,
you read the "online" edition of a newspaper, you will likely find that
the same articles that are pre-wrapped in the print edition contain
paragraphs in HTML that are not pre-wrapped, but allow the user agent to
re-wrap to the width of the user's device.
> Complying with standard e-mail practices is called,
> can you say it...etiquette.
>   
I didn't see the original post that prompted this comment, but, I must
say that while I have usually complied with this "standard practice" for
decades, I have always thought that it was misconceived.  The insertion
of spurious end-of-line characters in text/plain content-types  makes it
impossible (difficult, anyhow) to determine the difference between
"hard" (semantically significant) and "soft" (visual formatting)
line-breaks.  This makes it very difficult for MUAs to properly rewrap
lines when window widths change, or when text gets quoted for replies. 
We've all seen quoted/requoted/requoted text that starts to get broken
in such a way as to be almost unreadable.  Good MUAs often can deal with
it, and several RFCs have tried to address this through kludges, but not
through correcting the fundamental problem: stop this misconceived
"standard practice" so that we don't have to go through contortions
trying to reverse-engineer where the original author intended to have
"hard" line-breaks (end-of-paragraph).

I still remember the day when the only way to read text was on an
80-column (or less) CRT if you were lucky, or more likely a line printer
or printing TTY (132 or 80 columns, sometimes less), and even then, I
thought that auto-rewrap of paragraphs made much more sense than
pre-formatted paragraphs that rarely matched the device's width.  If I
am reading your email on my mobile phone, should I demand that you
format it to 25-column width?  Then what about everyone else who has to
read those short columns on their 21" display?  What if I like to lay
out my MUA window in a column that is too narrow to display 76 columns? 
What if I am sight-disabled and require the font to be so large that 76
columns cannot fit on my display?  How is it "good etiquette" to give me
difficult to read text, but "poor etiquette" to allow me to format it as
*I* require or prefer?  Let's stop the madness!

Any 10-year-old can write a program to wrap lines to device/window
widths.  If your MUA can't, and you are unwilling to switch, tell me
where the source-code is and when I have time I'll look into
un-retardifying it for you.

In the meantime, can anyone give a good reason why this "standard
practice" should continue?