Wrap or not - was C & undefined behaviour - was Re: tumble under BSD

[Mike Stein]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mouse" <mouse at Rodents-Montreal.ORG>
To: <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Sunday, April 03, 2016 9:32 PM
Subject: Re: C & undefined behaviour - was Re: tumble under BSD


>>> (Please don't use paragraph-length lines.)
>> Why not?  Is your email client incapable of wrapping text?
> 
> No; it just assumes that - if the text is not marked as reflowable -
> that it shouldn't mangle it by inserting line breaks that weren't there
> in the original.  It is obnoxious to have a long line (say, a compile
> line quoted from make output) mangled into illegibility by
> gratuitiously inserted line breaks; it is perhaps even worse to have
> multiple short lines pasted together by gratuitously deleted line
> breaks.  Each of those behaviours is broken.  (When applied to text not
> marked reflowable, that is.  If the text is marked reflowable, then
> either behaviour is fine - but such text needs to not only be marked
> but be wrapped in accordance with the format=flowed spec.)
> 
> I can, of course, rewrap text no matter how it's marked, just as I can
> undo rot13, translate from EBCDIC, etc - but, as with those, it's an
> additional step and thus impairs readability.
> 
> /~\ The ASCII   Mouse
> \ / Ribbon Campaign
> X  Against HTML mouse at rodents-montreal.org
> / \ Email!      7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39  4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B

------------
I find the opposite; my client wraps just fine, line lengths expanding or 
contracting according to font and window size; that seems to be the way 
most folks do it with the infinite range of font, screen and window sizes 
these days (not to mention top-posting also being the norm 'out there' ;-)

On the other hand, when lines are fixed length, with a smaller screen/window
or after a few quotes each adding a chevron or two to each line I end up 
with a hard-to-read text with most lines split into two.

m