On Sat, 30 Nov 2002 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> accepet things blindly. So please give convincing reasons for the
> line breaking and not the ones in age old documents which I have
If I have to reply to someone's mail, I prefer to snip out irrelevant
portions of the mail and quote only relevant portions. I hope no one
disputes this point.
If a line goes beyond 80 characters, it will wrap automatically. I will
have no problem reading the mail. Any good email client will do that
for you.
When I hit reply though, the email client needs to make a decision.
Does it display long lines as they are, or does it insert hard line
breaks near the right edge of the screen.
If it chooses the latter, then it is modifying the original message.
This could cause lossage when the original message actually required
lines longer than the screen width (eg, source code).
So, let's assume it does the former.
I now need to snip off irrelevant portions of the message. The easiest
way is to delete all lines that are not relevant, and leave the rest.
But... the entire message is on one long line. What do I delete? I'd
have to navigate my cursor to the position within the line where I want
the deletion to start, and then delete until the position where I want
the deletion to stop. Too much work for someone who's offering free
support. Most people would rather just quote everything - and then get
flamed for it.
There is another solution. An editor that can navigate through the
message by screen lines and not by actual lines. It should also be able
to delete screen lines.
There's a new problem here though. If the lines were long to begin
with, then deleting a portion from the innards of the line leaves a line
that may not make sense. Take for example (assuming screen width==15c)
Hi luggers my sound card doesn't work. What should I do? I have a
Yamaha card.
wraps to:
Hi luggers my
sound card
doesn't work.
What should I
do? I have a
Yamaha card.
would snip to:
> my sound
> card doesn't
> work. What
[snip]
> Yamaha card.
But, since the email client shouldn't be automatically adding line
breaks to someone else's message, this line is actually:
> my sound > card doesn't > work. What
[snip]
> Yamaha card.
Which will cause problems when the reply is replied to.
If everyone has a line length of approx 72 characters, it allows for up
to three or four levels of quoting. Sure, lines will get smaller as
they go along, but that's a Good Thing, without which, the Story of Mel
wouldn't have quite the same effect.
Philip
--
Anyone who imagines that all fruits ripen at the same time
as the strawberries, knows nothing about grapes.
-- Philippus Paracelsus
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