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From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: news.software.b,news.admin,news.misc
Subject: Re: Messages with >80-character lines
Message-ID: <8793@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 19-Oct-87 16:16:03 EDT
Article-I.D.: utzoo.8793
Posted: Mon Oct 19 16:16:03 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 19-Oct-87 16:16:03 EDT
References: <767@quacky.UUCP>, <696@unisoft.UUCP>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 23

> It is a problem, and what we should do about it is fix the news-reading
> and news-transferring programs to handle such messages in a reasonable
> manner.  Real soon now, >80 character lines will become the norm, and
> we had better be ready for them.

Better yet, we should stay compatible with existing practice -- a matter
of considerable importance in a network like this, where coordinated software
updates are utterly impossible -- and let the long-linists fix *their*
software to present text the way they like it while adhering to existing
standards for inter-system transmission.

> 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...

Actually, text formatters discovered that it was quite possible to have
text be output-device-width-independent without this silly incompatibility
some twenty or more years ago.  Just notice the empty line that separates
the paragraphs.  (Oh yes, and read the ASCII standard about the meaning of
newline, so you know what you're trying to be compatible with.)
-- 
"Mir" means "peace", as in           |  Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
"the war is over; we've won".        | {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,utai}!utzoo!henry