Re: Boulder Pledge
On Tue, Jan 28, 2003 at 10:22:25AM +0100, Tim van Erven wrote:
> On Mon, 27/01/2003 09:25 -0500, Daniel Barclay wrote:
> >> From: Edward Craig <epcraig@efn.org>
> >> Well, some of us still run to terminal mode, but it's all based on
> >> Hollderith cards, I tell you, all because of IBM and the IRS.
> >
> > Well, there's also a little factor from how many characters in a readable
> > font size fit across a standard size sheet of paper.
>
> Ever noticed how many characters there are on a line of a newspaper or
> in books? It may nog be exactly 80, but it's close. The reason is much
> longer lines are harder to read. Try putting some tekst on a page in
> landscape; it's really annoying.
Actually, it's closer to 60 characters. That's why LaTeX wraps at
about 60 characters by default. Typesetters decided a long time ago
that lines shouldn't be longer than that.
Newspapers are even smaller (about twenty). They're typeset that way
for a reason; such short lines are very easy to read quickly because
your eyes don't have to re-focus multiple times per line.
Having a limit to the number of characters per line is very important,
unfortunately 72 is a bit too wide. That's because, of course, the
standards were written by technical people, not by typesetters. They
set the limit at that width because it would fill their 80 column
terminals nicely and still allow for some quoting, rather than at the
widest width that's easy to read. The terminals were made wider than
would be the most optimum for prose, I imagine, because 60 characters
really isn't wide enough for code or formatted data.
I think 8.5in wide paper being as wide as it is is a horrible shame as
<60 character wide text at a reasonable font size has ridiculously
wide margins. I have noticed that court opinions are written single
column and about 60 characters per line, and many textbooks have wide
pages with very wide outside margins in which they put text and notes,
but people generally just end up stretching the lines out so the page
isn't half-empty. I suspect that the paper is so wide because it was
designed for hand-written messages. When typewriters were invented,
allowing the masses to write typewritten text, everyone just kept
using the same paper on which they used to write by hand.
On the subject of wrapping lines, of course modern mail readers can
wrap long
lines. Hell, my TERMINAL can wrap long lines so I don't lose data
off the
edge, but that still means things end up looking like crap when it
finally
reaches the newline and it's not aligned with edge of the terminal.
I think someone suggested that the author doesn't include any newlines
in the paragraph so the reader's MUA can wrap lines where he
specifies. There are two problems there. First is the previously
mentioned problem with quoting. I've noticed that MUAs that don't
insert newlines at the end of their lines are the same ones that
promote horrible quoting practices (ie, composing the entire previous
message after a -- Original Message -- line). Honestly, at that point
the quoted text has become so useless that it might as well have just
been excluded from the reply to save bandwidth and storage space.
The other big problem with the no-newlines idea is that the sender
loses the ability to apply special formatting to her message to make
ASCII art or tables (for instance). She has no idea where the reader's
MUA is going to wrap the lines so her neat diagrams and tables could
end up being a bunch of incomprehensible gibberish to the reader. You
therefore end up *losing* functionality without significant
improvement by eliminating the end-of-line newlines.
Another argument I've seen is that few use people use 80 column
terminals anymore so it's stupid to have such a restriction and end up
having all of that wasted space to the right of the text. Granted,
most people have the *ability* to look at longer lines, but that
doesn't mean they should. I prefer to use that extra space on my
screen to tile terminals so I can look at multiple terminals at a
time. I'm currently typing this in a 80x59 emacs window with two 80x24
line aterms to the right of it. Besides that, if not at 80 characters,
where *should* it wrap? If anything, the previous discussion of line
widths and readability suggests that lines should /shorter/, not
longer.
The best reason I can think of for wrapping at <=72 characters is that
the standard requires it. The *only* appropriate place for this
discussion would be in an ITEF working group for the purpose of
updating the standard. Until RFC 278 (and all other RFCs that mention
the 72 character limit) are obsoleted by a standard that suggests
something different, or until we quit using plaintext messaging, then
MUAs must wrap the text they send at 72 characters. That's all ye know
on earth and all ye need know.
--
Jordan Bettis <http://www.hafd.org/~jordanb> All things that are,
[President Jimmy] Carter told Americans the truth and they hated him
for it. [They] responded by throwing him out of office and replaced
him with a movie actor who promised to restore the Great Enterprise to
all its former glory, whatever the costs.
-- James Howard Kunstler, _The Geography of Nowhere_
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