Why wrap @ 80?

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Fri, Apr 23, 2004 at 06:00:09PM -0400, gabriel wrote:
> sorry to rain on everyone's history less (as interesting as it is... i had no 
> idea this issue went so far back)  i have to ask.  when then are we going to 
> abandon this very, very old obsolete standard?  i understand that there's 
> still a great many users on this list and elsewhere using mutt and pine etc. 
> but why don't those programs compensate for 80+ character lines?  wouldn't 
> this help the rest of us get out of this nearly century-old restriction?

Have you seen what happens when a web browser hits a text file that
isn't wrapped at something sensible in width?  You have to scroll for
miles sideways to read each line.  Very painful.  Having autowrapping
does not improve the look of email (neither do propertional fonts for
that matter, they even make some things much less clear).  Leave
unwrapped text to the goofballs that think email should be in HTML, and
leave wrapped text to those of us using standard compliant email clients.

Should every email client in existence have to be rewritten, recompiled,
and reinstalled on every system out there just to make email look the
way you think it should, or should we stick with what already works for
every email client ever made.

Lennart Sorensen
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