On 2005-10-13 | 07:56:48, Thomas Roessler wrote:
The decision is roughly as arbitrary as the decision to have columns in newspapers, or the decision in the format=flowed spec not to make lines longer than some 72 (?) characters when displayed unflowed. Hint: These decisions are generally based on the experience that shorter lines are much easier to read than longer lines.
That is not correct, newspapers cannot yet be customized, their format and layout is the result of technical considerations and reader's preference. For example, most people would prefer smaller pages but that would make printing more difficult, expensive and time consuming. Newspapers often have lots of rows and are seldom held exactly horizontal which makes columns a good thing to reduce unwanted vertical eye movement.
Format=flowed was innovated by some engineers at Eudora, a MUA that has only a few percent market share and could not dictate a new standard. They had to keep in mind that format=flowed messages must be compatible with other user agents that were limiting lines to 72 characters and the SMTP standard limiting lines to 80 characters including CRLF.
I'm hearing "IF a user wants", and "it's not correct not to use the full width of the screen when the original message is format=flowed." I don't think I've heared anyone seriously argue that they would actually like to read their e-mail wrapped at column 132 (or whatever).
I would like to read my mail at 156 columns, that's why I brought up this issue.
Tom -- Serverbetrieb - freie Meinungsäusserung im Internet http://www.hostmaster.org/Server.html
Attachment:
pgpvPC3ZCKANi.pgp
Description: PGP signature