🚀 go-pugleaf

Although the ongoing use of 24x80 windows is certainly due to the memories 
of "old school programmers", the recommended limitations of lines to fit 
within 80 characters has an older cause.

In the "small-i internet" (when networks with different protocols were 
interconnected for email) of two decades ago, it was impossible to 
transmit mail reliably across non-TCP/non-SMTP networks unless it fit 
within an 80 character line.  Punch card image was a particularly 
important concept in some of these.

Today, the "small-i internet" is more of a memory in the minds of 
oldtimers; but it never has been certified as dead, extinct, vanished. 
Thus, there is a reluctance to relax the limit, and thus risk breaking 
some vestigal piece of "small-i internet"; especially as such may be in 
some pathetic little Third World twarf that doesn't have much of a chance 
of getting real Internet ("large-I Internet") before the sun novas.

Quite a few email technology rules are in place to benefit some ancient 
facility that, for one reason or other, can't be updated.

As a practical matter, it really doesn't matter what the line lengths are. 
Flowed text and quoted-word continuation rules exist so that users should 
neither know, nor particularly care, how the bits are represented.  The 
only people who should care are programmers who write email clients.

In typography, most text has considerably narrower margins than 80 
characters to enhance readability.  Typewriters typically have their 
margins set at 65.  Books (excluding geek technical books) have narrower 
margins.

-- Mark --

http://panda.com/mrc
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.