[Users] Wrapping

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Sun, 9 Jun 2019 10:27:32 +0930, Andrew Savchenko wrote:
>The topic is a bit opinionated and we might be asked to take this
>discussion elsewhere. That being said...  

Actually you made it a topic by replying without wrapped lines to a
mailing list. Please stop doing this, only paste code without
automatically wrapped lines.

On Sat, 8 Jun 2019 23:15:28 +0300, mlist at riseup.net wrote:
>I notice that most people today don't wrap long lines.  

I do not notice the same as you.

>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.  

You expect everybody to use resizeable windows, but not everybody does
and those who do not necessarily share your workflow to resize windows
to get proper wrapped lines. Btw. resizing a windows not necessarily
does wrap lines, it also could cut/lose text and probably most common
is that you need to scroll.

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

That is really bizarre, since 80 chars, or the way more common 72 chars
are a sane value for text on a screen. You could read this even on an
very, very ancient, very, very small CRT. The way you are resizing
windows seems to be very uncommon. Usually a very small window on a
modern screen is still wide enough to fit 80 chars.

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

But especially preview windows are often way wider, so wrapped lines
make text still easier to read. Some of us are indeed using modern
environments and very large screens, but we are doing this for usage of
special programs and don't care about the window sizes of our MUAs a
lot.

>So I wonder: what is good about wrapping?  

Good formatted lines are easier to read.

>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?  

Is there any standard that expects that computer users share that kind
of window managers and MUAs as you do and that they share the same
workflow of resizing windows, too?

Receivers might be able to read bad formatted emails, but they less
likely are willing to read bad formatted emails.

Regards,
Ralf