Subj : Desired Living Document (section): Author Compliance
To   : Kees van Eeten
From : Rob Swindell
Date : Mon Apr 15 2019 03:49 am

  Re: Desired Living Document (section): Author Compliance
  By: Kees van Eeten to Rob Swindell on Mon Apr 15 2019 12:34 pm

 > Hello Rob!
 >
 > 15 Apr 19 02:45, you wrote to mark lewis:
 >
 >  RS> @COLS: 132
 >  RS>   Re: Desired Living Document (section): Author Compliance
 >  RS>   By: mark lewis to Rob Swindell on Sun Apr 14 2019 09:10 am
 >
 >  >>
 >  >>  On 2019 Apr 14 01:32:20, you wrote to me:
 >  >>
 >  >>  ON>>> That would make ^aCOLS: 80^m make a little more sence ;)
 >  >>
 >  >>  ml>> i don't know... i understand it for what it is intended to be used
 >  >>  ml>> for but why  do i want to display a message artifically restricted
 >  >> to
 >  >>  ml>> 80cols on my 125  character wide terminal?
 >  >>
 >  >>  RS> Sorry, but you don't understand the intention of those control line
 >  >>  RS> then. I'd be happy to discuss it.
 >  >>
 >  >> maybe i don't fully understand it, then... why would i or my terminal
 >  >> care  about the width of the original writer's screen i we're not going
 >  >> to use that  value on our end some how?
 >
 >  RS> It has nothing to do with artificially restricting anything. It allows an intelligent message viewer (e.g. Synchronet) t
 >  RS> re-wrap messages for nice display by knowing the difference between a 39 character line of text that was: a. that length
 >  RS> because of the result of a word-wrapping due to being written with a 40 column terminal, or b. that length because the
 >  RS> author intended for the line to be short (e.g. drawing a table)
 >
 >  RS> It allows an intelligent viewer to make *more* use of the available columns to display messages while retaining the
 >  RS> formatting originally intended (hopefully) by the message's author.
 >
 >  Is not that, why Fidonet makes a distict between a hard and a soft return
 >  0d versus 8d

That's a good question. I haven't see any BBS message editors that insert a so-called "soft CR" and FTS-1 says they (character
0x8d) should be ignored when importing packets, so that whole concept just seems to be an anachronism. Does anyone actuall
send/receive "soft CRs"?

.