Derek Martin <inva...@pizzashack.org> wrote on Wed, 31 Aug 2022 at 13:39:42 EDT in <20220831173942.gb13...@bladeshadow.org>:
> It's been my experience that if you read your mail on anything other > than a phone, the 72-character line width is fine, and even on a phone > if you turn it sideways it's still fine. My preferred solution, then, > has been to stick with following the standards and assume that if you > insist on reading mail on a hand-held device that can't accommodate > the standard, and/or refuse to rotate it so that it can, then you get > what you get, it's your choice and the consequences of your choice are > on you. That'd be true if we were sending emails to ourselves, but a lot of us send email to people who read their mail primarily or exclusively on phones and in desktop GUIs that don't approximate 72-chars. What tends to happen is those people psychologically view hard-wrapped 72-char emails as ugly and they become a far less effective means of communication than other people's emails are, regardless of conscious choice. It's great if you can choose the people who read your emails, but most of us are not so fortunate. As for standards-compliance, that's a red herring. Long lines are not going to trip up any modern client, they're just not. -- jh...@alum.mit.edu John Hawkinson
