[Python-Dev] Re: Python-dev summary for 2002-09-01 to 2002-09-15

[François Pinard]

[David Goodger]

> Please don't blame the markup!  By the time people see it, it's been
> mutilated by mailers to the point where it's unrecognizable.  [...]  As the
> author, please take steps to prevent your document's mutilation.

The message seems adequately formatted, as delivered here.

This is a recurring problem, deciding how far maintainers or writers should
keep in mind various broken software of the recipients.  There is an
equilibrium to reach, but the pressure is often undue on the authors, as
recipients want them to take care of everything bad they see.

My guess is that everybody has his/her share in that adventure.  As long as
the author does well, and he did fairly well here, most recipients problems
have to be addressed by recipients.

> Specifically, line wrapping gets screwed up if lines are longer than 76 or
> 78 characters, and indentation goes out the window.  I always limit files to
> 70 characters per line to prevent this.

The 79 or 80 character limit is still a reasonable convention and a good goal.
Some long URLs just do not fit within that space, they are not easily broken.
Some people use lower limits, as an aid for recipients later quoting the
original text, yet the proper refilling of quotes (and proper quotation) is
really the job of those who reply.  It goes a bit far that people limit
themselves to 70 characters per line, if because randomly broken software.

-- 
François Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard