[Users] Wrapping

mlist at riseup.net mlist at riseup.net
Sat Jun 8 22:15:28 CEST 2019


Hi,

I couldn't find any info on the topic, so I decided to ask here.

My question is about wrapping (in general).

I notice that most people today don't wrap long lines. That is obviously due to the mail clients they use. It seems wrapping is more typical for "old timers" and experts (programmers etc). However I wonder how relevant this practice is because:

- Non-wrapped messages give the more freedom to the reader to change the horizontal size of the window and see lines with any length. This is good IMO.

- OTOH wrapped messages are fixed at certain width and look really bad if windows size is narrower.

- The screens we use today are not those old text only displays limited to 80 columns.

So I wonder: what is good about wrapping?

Also: Is there any RFC that mandates a maximum line length of mail messages? IOW without wrapping: is there any danger that the receiver won't be able to read the message due to it being non-standard/invalid?


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