Re: login as root to GUI
On Thu, Apr 03, 2003 at 08:18:30AM -0500, ronin2@bellatlantic.net wrote:
> On Wed, 2 Apr 2003 23:31:52 -0800
> Paul Johnson <baloo@ursine.dyndns.org> wrote:
> >
> > Please turn your line wraps on to something more sensable like 72
> > columns per line instead of one paragraph per line.
>
> This isn't meant to be picking on you. But I've been considering this
> for a while.
>
> People shouldn't wrap lines at all in messages they send -- this is a
> hoary hold-over from the dark ages.
>
> Line wrap is a display function, and it should be handled by the
> receiver's MUA. People who want big windows with wide paragraphs can
> have them; people who want narrow windows can have those.
>
> And people who still use MUAs that can't do line wrap should consider
> finding one that can.
While your points have some technical validity, they fly in the face
of accepted netiquette[1]. In this case, I think most people agree
that it is better to conform to conventions so that communication is
encouraged, rather than to blaze new trails of coolness and technical
sophistry[2][3].
mutt does line wrap, but the default is ugly and hard to read. Many
popular and useful MUAs don't do linewrap at all. Furthermore, how
does someone effectively _quote_ text which is not linewrapped? Now
the local MUA has to be smart enough to precede each "unwrapped" line
with the appropriate number of quote characters. Let's just write
email in HTML if we're going to expect the receiver to reformat the
entire message[3 again]. This is email, not the World Wide Web.
Sorry, but I think you're off on the wrong track here.
[1] rfc 1855
[2] sorry for the hyperbole
[3] there was a huge thread on d-curiosa where some guy argued that
html email was the only way to go since it allowed more expression.
He was beaten severely about the head and shoulders.
--
Nathan Norman - Incanus Networking mailto:nnorman@incanus.net
prepBut nI vrbLike adjHungarian! qWhat's artThe adjBig nProblem?
-- alec flett @netscape
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