Why wrap @ 80?

[J. Schaap]

It probably pre-dates computer era. Typewriters used 10 cpi and on a
8.5" sheet would be 80 columns plus 1/4 " margins.
Boy, that makes me really old remembering that I used a typewriter 55
years ago

J. Schaap

On Fri, 2004-04-23 at 13:04, Rob Sutherland wrote:
> On Fri, 23 Apr 2004 12:49:42 -0400
> JoeHill <joehill-rieW9WUcm8FFJ04o6PK0Fg at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, 23 Apr 2004 11:28:41 -0400
> > Noah John Gellner disseminated the following:
> > 
> > > Why do we wrap text at 80 columns on TLUG, and elsewhere on the Net for
> > > that matter? I know that if your mailreader doesn't autowrap it can be
> > > unpleasant to read, but don't the vast majority of readers wrap? The
> > > advantage of not wrapping is that fwds, replies, and follow-ups don't
> > > get funky formatting due to the hard carriage returns. 
> > 
> > From what I understand, it's for people who don't use a GUI at all, they read
> > their mail in text mode with Mutt or Pine.
> > 
> > Remember, a community is judged by how it treats the least of its members :-)
> 
> Hooo boy, am I dating myself. Yep, that's right, 80 columns or less is built 
> into a *lot* of older stuff. It would be nice if there was some standard way 
> for all readers and backend processes to handle formatting, but we're not there
> yet :-(
> 
> It's quite fascinating how that 80 column limit still hangs around. It started on 
> punch cards, then the first terminals used it because they were mainly used to enter 
> data to programs that expected card images and it just keeps lurking :-)
> 
> Rob 

--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml