On Mon, Aug 21, 2006 at 06:49:20PM -0400, Mr. Shawn H. Corey wrote: > Chip Salzenberg wrote: > > On Mon, Aug 21, 2006 at 06:05:08PM -0400, Mr. Shawn H. Corey wrote: > >> Don't forget that some programs, like mailers, wrap at 80 characters. > > > > I don't know of any mailer that is hard-coded at any given column width. > > Do you? > > Thunderbird, Evolution, just to name two. OK, they're not hard-coded; > you can change the option (if you can find it). > > What I'm saying is that we still have the legacy of 80 columns and > unless necessary, all ASCII files should fit within it. > > And yes, I realize that code seldom gets mailed but there may be other > programs that have this artificial limit in them and if you're lazy > (like me), you couldn't be bother changing their factory settings. In > other words, don't exceed 80 columns unless you have a reason for it. > > The thing about mail programs is that even if you set you're limit to > something large like 2048, the person who received your message may > still have a limit of 80, which would make any message you send hard to > read. > > Just keep in mind that we're stuck with the 80 column limit the same way > we are stuck with the QWERTY keyboard. It's not the best there is, it's > only what most expect.
That's an interesting vantage point. Restated, "there are still old systems out there, let's conform to them". I could be suffering a failure of imagination, but I don't see why we would do that. We'd just be perpetuating the tyranny rather than ending it. It seems to me that *if* the line length is ever a problem, we have or can create tools to deal with it (uuencode anyone?). Also by not keeping to 80 columns, we can weed out the modern tools that still have such limitations and encourage the authors to fix them. And if *that* turns out to be too big of an endeavour, we can always go back to 80 columns, but I'm guessing whatever problems there are will be small and localized. just my humble opinion, -Scott -- Jonathan Scott Duff [EMAIL PROTECTED]
