On Sat, Nov 24, 2012 at 12:07:06PM -0500, Peter Davis wrote: > > On Sat, Nov 24, 2012, at 11:34 AM, Derek Martin wrote: > > Except the ideal line length has been proven (to the extent that such > > is possible) scientifically to not be a fallacy. > > Actually, even a quick Google search on "readability line length" turns > up results that make claims for 50 character lines, and others that > advocate 95 character lines
First, how many of these results involve actual rigorous studies using the scientific method? Second, note that at no point did I say "exactly 80 characters" -- if you reread my posts, I always said "around 80 characters". As you point out, there are a number of factors that can influence that number, including font size, spacing, and the visual accuity of the reader. Regardless, I think we can agree that all of the studies put the number closer to 80 characters than the 272 characters that fit on my display with my chosen font. The convention for e-mail is 72 characters. This takes into account quoting, but guess what? It's also the average of 95 and 50 (72.5). Humans want things to be simple, and having a single standard is useful for lots of things. So you have to pick a single number, and that's as good a single number as you can hope for. > > RFC 2646 makes no provision for including lines which should not > > be wrapped or which should be treated as pre-formatted, but one is > > needed for e-mails containing things like tables, code, etc. > > True, but HTML allows all of those things and, through the use of a > text-based browser like w3m, can render them in plain text. I do this > with mutt all the time, and the results seem very satisfactory. Yeah, I said exactly that in another message. Now generate HTML mail with Mutt. Plus you still get a lot of folks -- many of whom use GUI clents -- who complain about HTML mail for any number of reasons. And at least a few of them are legitimately arguable concerns. A good start: http://www.georgedillon.com/web/html_email_is_evil.shtml I repeat what I said in an earlier message in this thread. HTML is best for handling this. But the matter is not that simple, and for those of us who love Mutt, it's currently not (pratically speaking) an option at all, for outgoing mail. -- Derek D. Martin http://www.pizzashack.org/ GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02 -=-=-=-=- This message is posted from an invalid address. Replying to it will result in undeliverable mail due to spam prevention. Sorry for the inconvenience.
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