This is an oft repeated topic on many mailing lists.  Usually it
devolves into the basic point that some older mail/news readers do not
wrap long lines, and generally mailing list posts should be wrapped by
the sender at 70 characters.  There are even some people who set their
newer mail readers up to do this assuming that the sender applied their
formatting to a message in a prticular way on purpose, and they enjoy
reading email layed out as the sender intended.

Then a long discussion occurs about how people should update their
software, which gets various responses about what people can and can't
do with their machines, then goes into how standards should be updated,
etc.  At this point it devolves into useless ranting.

Please see this section
http://www.gweep.ca/~edmonds/usenet/ml-etiquette.html#SECTION00040000000000000000
of a good mailing list etiquette FAQ for particular help on this issue.

You may disagree, but I do not support the view that it is a problem at
the reader's end.  Further, screen resolution is not really an issue.
Most readers will display at least 80 characters wide.  However, even in
a reader which can display 180 characters wide it is not easy to read,
and so they are often set to somewhere around 80 characters regardless
of the screen width.

But it's a moot point.  Set it however you like it, accept the
occasional complaint and know that often your message will simply be
skipped over since many will not take the time to scroll to the right
unless the first few words are particularily compelling.

-Adam

Dwayne Reid wrote:

> At 08:42 AM 7/18/2004, D. Jay Newman wrote:
>
>> ps. I don't want to nitpick, but it would *really* help us to respond
>>     to specific parts of your post if you would insert returns at the
>> end
>>          of each line.
>
>
> That sounds like an email client problem at the reader's end rather than
> the sender.  Most email clients wrap lines properly, even when replying.
>
> The problem with putting line returns at the end of each line is that it
> does not deal with screen resolution differences at the reader's end.  In
> other words, what looks good on one system does not look good on others.
>
> Allowing (configuring) the email client to determine line wraps seems to
> make the most sense.
>
> dwayne
>
> --
> Dwayne Reid   <dwayner@planet.eon.net>
> Trinity Electronics Systems Ltd    Edmonton, AB, CANADA
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