On Wed, Feb 26, 2025 at 11:21:42AM -0700, Soren Stoutner wrote: > I started thinking about this a few weeks ago when I received an email from a > Debian Developer complaining that replies from my email client (KMail) looked > odd because they truncated quoted lines in a way that did not lay out > pleasingly. This was because I had set KMail to wrap lines at 80 characters.
I have been using Kmail for years without requiring my communication partners to change their habits. I am one of those mutt dinosaurs. While mutt displays e-mails with long lines just fine, handing them over to the editor for answering leaves the long lines to the editor. If I wanted just to quote part of your message above, or even insert my comments between two of your sentences, that would be manual work. Can this be done even better? Or is this just another discussion whether we should continue using mailing lists? I mean, Internet humanity hasn't been able to settle on one kind of quoting referenced messages (with the in my opinion sensible way having lost to the useless top posting method). > However, from a technical perspective, having the *sending* program decide > where line breaks should be in an email doesn’t seem like the correct > approach to me because, 1) the sending program does not know the screen width > of the receiving program, and 2) there is large variability in the screen > width of receiving devices, including cell phones who are often less than 80 > characters wide. The sending program also knows more what the writing person wants to say. > I have composed this email without an arbitrary column wrap, so that those > receiving it can see how it is handled by their various clients and devices. Clumsy to read, impossible to reply to. Greetings Marc -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Marc Haber | "I don't trust Computers. They | Mailadresse im Header Leimen, Germany | lose things." Winona Ryder | Fon: *49 6224 1600402 Nordisch by Nature | How to make an American Quilt | Fax: *49 6224 1600421
