Re: Proposal - Remove requirement that emails be wrapped at 80 characters

[Sam Hartman <hartmans@debian.org>]

>>>>> "Andrew" == Andrew M A Cater <amacater@einval.com> writes:


    Andrew> Conversely, for screen magnification at, say 400%, fully
    Andrew> justified text or text filling a monitor space is
    Andrew> undesirable and much harder to read.  For this, text that is
    Andrew> left justified, ragged right and possibly hand wrapped at 74
    Andrew> characters is more straightforward to read.

Although presumably having the client do the wrapping as proposed in
this change would make easier for people who want short lines as well as
people who want long lines.

    Andrew> Unlike the mailing list convention of text as any reply
    Andrew> being interleaved, he would prefer a new email with the
    Andrew> content and the Outlook style of top quoting. It's a lot
    Andrew> easier to just read the top of the message with a screen
    Andrew> reader than have to dig through a long reply to find
    Andrew> context.

I find MUA features that allow quoted blocks to be collapsed helpful for
this reason.  (I find notmuch's default Emacs integration gives great
results for reading interleaved quoting  with a screen reader for
example.)

However, I have come to the conclusion that for most discussions, top
quoting is far superior. The interleaved style encourages people to
respond point-by-point and to lose sight of the  overall conversation
and how/weather their response fits into that.
For detailed technical work, that point-by-point context may be
valuable.
But for community discussions, responding point-by-point encourages
people to focus on disagreement rather than agreement and whether the
disagreement is relevant.

This paragraph and the proceeding paragraph are great examples. While I
find my point interesting in the context of top quoting vs interleaved
quoting, it has no relevance to the broader discussion of line length.
I never would have taken the time to fit it into a top-quoted message.
But because I chose to respond point-by-point to Andrew's mail now I
take up all your time with trivia that I find mildly interesting...and
perhaps someone will reply point by point to me and we can find
ourselves in another flamewar.