[thechat] Wrapping text?

Plunkett, Matt MPlunkett at MSA.com
Wed Jul 10 11:25:01 CDT 2002


	>> Why not improve the interface on the web archives instead of
asking
	>> everyone to change their mail habits?

	> Because it's considered polite when taking part in an email list
to
	> abide by the general rules of the community and the netiquette
	> guidelines that have evolved over time.

	> Also you have to remember, that just like the web, you do not know
what
	> kind of client the viewer of your message is using. It could be
Outlook,
	> it could be mutt, it could be any number of mail clients
inbetween, and
	>not all of them handle long lines the same way. Having a base
standard
	>ensures that no-one gets left behind.

We're not discussing someone reading it in a mail reader though.  We're
talking about a web interface...or at least the original stuff that was
quoted was talking about mail read from the archives that are on the web.
The archives just stuffs the text of your message into a <pre> block.  It
wouldn't be tough to format it in actual HTML...even just inserting your own
line breaks every 65 characters would help.

Sure, by the rules of nettiquette the <pre> block should be sufficient.  It
clearly isn't tho, eh?



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