On Sat, Nov 24, 2012, at 11:34 AM, Derek Martin wrote: > Except the ideal line length has been proven (to the extent that such > is possible) scientifically to not be a fallacy.
Actually, even a quick Google search on "readability line length" turns up results that make claims for 50 character lines, and others that advocate 95 character lines, and several values in between (and possibly outside that range if I go to the second page of search results.) However, if you read the analysis, the readability seems to stem more from the physical position of the line beginnings and endings within the field of view, rather than the number of characters. In other words, it is the angle subtended by the line within the field of view that matters, and that depends on the distance to the display surface, the font used, and other factors. I don't think we can safely conclude that 80 is the ideal character width in all situations. > RFC 2646 makes no > provision for including lines which should not be wrapped or which > should be treated as pre-formatted, but one is needed for e-mails > containing things like tables, code, etc. True, but HTML allows all of those things and, through the use of a text-based browser like w3m, can render them in plain text. I do this with mutt all the time, and the results seem very satisfactory. -pd -- Peter Davis www.techcurmudgeon.com
