RFC: Lazy syntax for paragraphs, blockquotes and lists

[david parsons]

On Fri, Sep 03, 2010 at 05:50:28PM -0400, Thomas Humiston wrote:

> On Sep 3, 2010, at 1:55 PM, david parsons wrote:

> 

> > 78 character line length is an artifact of ttys traditionally being  

> > 80 columns wide, as well as an artifact of the annoying habit of  

> > some ttys to force a newline if you write a character into the last  

> > cell on the screen.

> 

> 

> 

> According to Ken Spreitzer at Tiger Technologies, word wrap is not  

> just an artifact:

> 

> > Actually, the official Internet email specifications ("RFC"s) still  

> > require outgoing messages to be broken. Please see this page for an  

> > interesting discussion of this:


     821 said 1000 characters (including the cr/lf) maximum.  In
     reality, many MTAs follow the implementation suggestions in
     821 and handle longer lines w/o complaint.

     That's *considerably* longer than 80 characters.

     (The Hazeltine terminal is the one I'm specificially thinking
     about with line-wrap.  Though that wasn't the only odd feature
     of those terminals, as anyone who was born after, oh, 1980 has
     the good fortune not to know about.)


     -david parsons