Re: Newsgroup

From: Dave Ryan (dryan_at_visi.com)
Date: 02/22/05 

Date: 22 Feb 2005 16:32:57 GMT

While pondering glazed doughnuts GSV Three Minds in a Can <GSV@quik.clara.co.uk> mistakenly typed
:
: Bitstring <cvfc1s$6k7$4@n4vu2.n4vu.com>, from the wonderful person Noah
: Little <me@privacy.net> said
:>GSV Three Minds in a Can wrote:
:>> No you wouldn't, but personally I don't have access to a teletype or
:>>flexowriter any more, and all of my 'wide selection of hardware' can
:>>cope with more than 100 characters these days - actually most of it
:>>acn cope with 256 or more.
:>
:>Of course, apart from common sense, courtesy and time-honored defacto
:>standards, there's not much reason to keep the posting widths down.
:>
:>Common sense:
:>First, humans don't read comfortably in wide columns. Think for a
:>moment why newspapers and magazines, which can easily print
:>256-character columns, tend toward column widths even narrower than 80
:>characters.
:
: Is true, however the difference between 72 and 80 is trivial as far as
: I am concerned, which is why I said I was willing to relax it 'a
: little'.
:
:>Courtesy:
:>Next, there are plenty of Usenet readers whose terminals can't
:>accommodate more than 80 characters
:
: So people keep asserting, without actually mentioning any. Like I said I
: haven't see one (outside of PDAs of cell phones) for many years now.
: Hands up anyone here who has a fixed 80 character width reading device
: (and what is it?). I mean there =are= VT100s and TTYs out there, but
: mostly in museums and back rooms (and government installations?).
:
:>...even more whose software or configurations don't accommodate wider
:>lines gracefully.
:
: The software problem is rather easily fixed - mine rewraps to the window
: width unless people deliberately send it broken,.
:
:>Defacto standard:
:>Nearly everyone who's been on Usenet long enough to know its real name
:>understands and abides by the ~72-character standard. Not everyone
:>does, however. Most of them wonder why their postings aren't getting
:>much response.
:
: I guess I'm just arguing about the value of ~72. Personally 80 doesn't
: phase me. Even 90 not a big problem. 120 or 256 .. yep, an issue.
:

So as long as it's within your* tolerances it's all good.

amusing.

The value of 72 is that you can reply to the post a couple of times and
still have it live within the 80 char limit. It's a convenience for
easier reading for others. Just as bottom posting or inline posting
is versus top posting or posting using plain text versus html. Of
course people can do whatever they desire but there are typically very
good reasons for the usenet 'standards' that people always whinge about.
If you want a more robust display then move on to the fabulous world
wide web.

I read usenet through a telnet session using a vt100 display. Yes,
it knows how to wrap wide posts, but they are pretty ugly and
difficult to read. HTML posts are even more brutal. Of course
reading my mail through the same setup prevents me from ever picking
up a virus. To each their own, but most of the time complaints
against the usenet standards are due to ignorance or just plain old
not caring about other people's 'problems'.

just my 2c.
-dave

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