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Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!apollo!rees
From: rees@apollo.uucp (Jim Rees)
Newsgroups: news.software.b,news.admin,news.misc
Subject: Re: Messages with >80-character lines
Message-ID: <37e7ff5a.b8ab@apollo.uucp>
Date: Fri, 16-Oct-87 15:31:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: apollo.37e7ff5a.b8ab
Posted: Fri Oct 16 15:31:00 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 18-Oct-87 00:29:17 EDT
References: <767@quacky.UUCP> <696@unisoft.UUCP>
Organization: Apollo Computer, Chelmsford, Mass.
Lines: 16
Xref: mnetor news.software.b:872 news.admin:1186 news.misc:1034


    Many people have now discovered that the easiest and most natural way
    to make text be screen-width-independent is to use <newline> as a
    paragraph separator, not a line separator.  The program that displays
    the text to the user then becomes responsible for breaking the paragraphs
    up into screen lines.  You would not believe how much nicer this makes
    things.  Not only does it solve the problem of different people using
    different size windows and different width fonts, it also makes composing
    text much more of a pleasure - no more reformatting.

I don't see why we should have to change the format of the text as sent.
It's easy to tell where lines and paragraphs end with the existing
format.  Lines end in a single NL, paras end in a double NL.  You can
still write a filter that reformats paras to your favorite line length.
This is in fact what the news reading interface (emacs based) that I
used to use did.