I don't mean to monopolize the conversation, but: Derek Martin <inva...@pizzashack.org> wrote on Wed, 31 Aug 2022 at 15:48:55 EDT in <20220831194855.gc13...@bladeshadow.org>:
> I don't see why this matters, because as I already pointed out, any > desktop GUI MUA will have no trouble displaying 72 character lines > wrapped as they are, and any *reasonable* mobile can do the same by > rotating it. (1) I do not agree that it is reasonable to expect mobile users to rotate their screens. (a) I think many won't do it (I don't usually have rotation enabled, for instance, because it leads to nuisance rotation. That means I have to unlock rotation to make it happen, which is annoying.) (b) Even if recipients *do* rotate, they will still have the subconscious/psychological result that "Dealing with Derek's emails takes more work, he is annoying." (2) On desktop GUIs, emails will be readable, but they will look different from most other sender's emails. This again becomes a variant of (1)(b). > > What tends to happen is those people psychologically view > > hard-wrapped 72-char emails as ugly and they become a far less > > effective means of communication than other people's emails are, > > regardless of conscious choice. > > This is unscientific nonsense. [[citation needed]] I think we can all accept that when people have to do more work to accomplish a task for Person A versus Person B, they can come to resent Person A. I'm sure we can dig up social science research on this topic generally, but is it really necessary? > There actually is significant psychological research into the ideal > line length for reading. There's some variation, but the consensus > seems to come in at about 60-75 characters, at a width of roughly > 4-5". Sure, but this assumes a lot of things. It assumes reasonably-formatted columns widths and vieport spaces, etc. It assumes we're not comparing fixed-width fonts to proportional ones and plai ntext versus HTML emails and all kidns of related issues. I very much doubt that these assumptions generally hold. > > As for standards-compliance, that's a red herring. Long lines are > > not going to trip up any modern client, they're just not. > > It may be less relevant today, but it's still relevant. As noted by Kurt, this is up to the MUA to address, and is easily fixed by encoding as quoted-printable. Probably other ways too. > The bottom line is there is absolutely no reason why hard-wrapped > lines of plain text at 72 characters should ever need to display > unreadably for any desktop user, or even anyone on any reasonable > mobile device which can rotate lines parallel to their longer side, Hard disagree. People don't always rotate, shouldn't have to, and will resent it when forced to do so. It may well be that some people aren't bothered, as you posit, but it's certainly not all people, and I would suggest it is not even close to the majority. > that doesn't boil down to the choice of the user. Flouting the > standards is a bad habit to be in. They exist for good reason; if you > choose to abandon them you do so at your own peril, and the rest of us > should not be expected to accommodate you. I don't really think we're flouting the standards. I suppose I should send some 2,000-character paragraph emails as tests to see what happens, but I very much doubt there will be problems as a result. -- jh...@alum.mit.edu John Hawkinson
