Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!ukma!david
From: david@ms.uky.edu (David Herron -- Resident E-mail Hack)
Newsgroups: news.software.b,news.admin,news.misc
Subject: Re: Messages with >80-character lines
Message-ID: <7523@g.ms.uky.edu>
Date: Sat, 17-Oct-87 18:37:30 EDT
Article-I.D.: g.7523
Posted: Sat Oct 17 18:37:30 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 18-Oct-87 12:04:40 EDT
References: <767@quacky.UUCP> <696@unisoft.UUCP> <37e7ff5a.b8ab@apollo.uucp>
Reply-To: david@ms.uky.edu (David Herron -- Resident E-mail Hack)
Organization: U of Kentucky, Mathematical Sciences
Lines: 28
Xref: mnetor news.software.b:875 news.admin:1190 news.misc:1040

>>    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.

PLEASE

We (ukma) exchange a lot of news with BITNET sites.  In particular,
an IBM machine at the U of Pennsylvania, and a VMS Vax cluster at
the U of Louisville.  In both cases their operating systems limit
test files to some maximum number of characters per line.  (The
IBM machine limits it to 132 columns and I don't know what the
VMS machine limits itself to).

In addition ... the file transfers are going over BITNET.  In this
case, BITNET means   CARD PUNCHES   virtual style.  The news is
transferred using a PUNCH deck (Maybe a print deck ... same problems)
in fixed length records.  We're talking truncation city folks!

The point is that this network is rapidly growing away from it's
roots as a UUCP-only network.  We've got greater use of the Internet
going on as well as (potentially) BITNET.  To an extent we can't
violate the standards of other networks and expect to get away
with it.  Instead, we need to be able to live with them.
-- 
<---- David Herron,  Local E-Mail Hack,  david@ms.uky.edu, david@ms.uky.csnet
<----                    {rutgers,uunet,cbosgd}!ukma!david, david@UKMA.BITNET
<---- I thought that time was this neat invention that kept everything
<---- from happening at once.  Why doesn't this work in practice?