* David Young <dyo...@pobox.com> [2012-11-20 11:59]: > On Tue, Nov 20, 2012 at 04:42:13PM +0000, John Long wrote: > > Mail and news need to have sane line lengths. 72 or 76 chars are common. It > > makes people look like AOL groupies when they post 500 character lines. Many > > of us use console news clients and newsreaders. Is this discussion really > > happening on a mailing list for mutt, a console email client? > > > > Take some responsibility for yourself and your content. Post like a man not > > a webbot. > > I cannot believe people are still hewing to this old line. It's like > thousands of people fell asleep at their teletypes (I mean the kind that > printed on paper) in the 1970s and woke up in 2012.
The point is not supporting teletypes (though I do print emails to paper quite regularly in 2012), but readability. Extending the line length to more than 70 or 80 characters significantly reduces readability. Holger