Extra Long Lines

[Chris Gordon-Smith]

Does anyone else find it annoying when messages are posted to this
newsgroup with very long lines?

It makes them very difficult to read on some newsreaders. I think that
standard 'netiquette' used to be to limit lines to 70 or so lines. Has
that changed?

Chris Gordon-Smith
www.simsoup.info

 

[Ian Collins]

Does anyone else find it annoying when messages are posted to this
newsgroup with very long lines?

It makes them very difficult to read on some newsreaders. I think that
standard 'netiquette' used to be to limit lines to 70 or so lines. Has
that changed?

No, but Google in its arrogance ignores almost all conventional netiquette.

 

[Juha Nieminen]

It makes them very difficult to read on some newsreaders. I think that
standard 'netiquette' used to be to limit lines to 70 or so lines. Has
that changed?

Nobody uses usenet anymore, therefore nobody cares anymore...

 

[Rui Maciel]

Does anyone else find it annoying when messages are posted to this
newsgroup with very long lines?

That isn't noticed with a decent newsclient.


Rui Maciel

 

[Chris Gordon-Smith]

That isn't noticed with a decent newsclient.

A lot of newsreaders allow long lines to wraparound at the right hand
side of the window. I think its very questionable whether this is
'decent'. On a 19 inch screen it makes text very difficult to read.
There is a reason why 70 - 80 characters was chosen. It was not solely
to do with limitations of technology.

Chris Gordon-Smith
www.simsoup.info

 

[Rui Maciel]

A lot of newsreaders allow long lines to wraparound at the right hand
side of the window. I think its very questionable whether this is
'decent'.

It's the right thing to do. There is a reason why web browsers handle long
paragraphs this way for some decades now.

On a 19 inch screen it makes text very difficult to read.

I also use screens which are 19 inch and larger, and I don't have this
problem.

There is a reason why 70 - 80 characters was chosen. It was not solely
to do with limitations of technology.

The reason for the arbitrary 70-ish column limit was only due to
technology's limits at that time. Since then, decades have passed and those
limits are long gone. In addition, it makes no sense to believe that the
way a paragraph is presented in your client should be set by anyone but
yourself.

You are free to use any usenet client that handles long lines well. For
example, thunderbird doesn't have this problem, and neither does knode or
pan.


Rui Maciel

 

[Tobias Müller]

A lot of newsreaders allow long lines to wraparound at the right hand
side of the window. I think its very questionable whether this is
'decent'. On a 19 inch screen it makes text very difficult to read.

Your screen size only matters if you run your newsreader in full screen
mode.

Tobi

 

[Chris Gordon-Smith]

Your screen size only matters if you run your newsreader in full screen
mode.

Tobi

So although many newsreaders are windows/GUI programs supporting full,
screen mode, there is a problem if they are actually used in full
screen mode and someone has posted a message without line breaks.

Hardly seems like progress to me.

I suppose posting long lines would be workable if newsreaders wrapped
around at 72 characters, but neither KNode nor Pan seem to do that.

Chris Gordon-Smith
www.simsoup.info

 

[Rui Maciel]

So although many newsreaders are windows/GUI programs supporting full,
screen mode, there is a problem if they are actually used in full
screen mode and someone has posted a message without line breaks.

Hardly seems like progress to me.

I suppose posting long lines would be workable if newsreaders wrapped
around at 72 characters, but neither KNode nor Pan seem to do that.

They wrap the user's posts, if the user tells them to.

If you are referring to the posts you download from a server then there is
no point in wrapping those. If the width of your newsclient's window is too
wide then you resize the window to better suit your tastes. With today's
monitors, if you run a newsclient fully maximized, the 72-column text limit
means that your newsclient, in spite of covering up the entire desktop, only
displays text on a column about 1/4 to 1/3 of the screen's width.


Rui Maciel

 

[Chris Gordon-Smith]

They wrap the user's posts, if the user tells them to.

If you are referring to the posts you download from a server then there is
no point in wrapping those. If the width of your newsclient's window is too
wide then you resize the window to better suit your tastes. With today's
monitors, if you run a newsclient fully maximized, the 72-column text limit
means that your newsclient, in spite of covering up the entire desktop, only
displays text on a column about 1/4 to 1/3 of the screen's width.

So you are saying that the user has to fiddle about with window sizes to
get readable text. Doesn't seem very ergonomic.

I have found a partial solution that I'm trying out. I've switched to
Gnus. It has a 'Washing' menu that includes a 'Fill long lines'
function. This at least seems to make the messages readable.

You might be interested in the following article on optimal line length:
http://baymard.com/blog/line-length-readability

Chris Gordon-Smith
www.simsoup.info

 

[Pavel]

So you are saying that the user has to fiddle about with window sizes to
get readable text. Doesn't seem very ergonomic.

It actually *is* ergonomic because what's a too long line for me (e.g. >60
characters) is not necessary what it is for you (e.g. >70) or some visual
prodigy with a huge yellow spot that can span 132 characters. Your Web browser
does same thing as your new reader (wraps at the size of the window); and after
billions of dollars spent in the browser war I do not expect them to have such a
major aspect of usability as how to select the text width totally wrong.
Certainly it is developed better than it was for early USENET clients (which,
for whatever it matters, ran in physical windows of fixed width (64, 80
characters etc). Thus IMHO the best of two worlds is to imitate such a physical
window with a Windows or X "window" (frame?) on your
much-higher-quality-than-in-old-good-days 19" monitor and use the so freed
screen real estate as a special bonus.

I have found a partial solution that I'm trying out. I've switched to
Gnus. It has a 'Washing' menu that includes a 'Fill long lines'
function. This at least seems to make the messages readable.

You might be interested in the following article on optimal line length:
http://baymard.com/blog/line-length-readability

Chris Gordon-Smith
www.simsoup.info

-Pavel

 

[Chris Gordon-Smith]

It actually *is* ergonomic because what's a too long line for me
(e.g. >60 characters) is not necessary what it is for you (e.g. >70)
or some visual prodigy with a huge yellow spot that can span 132
characters. Your Web browser does same thing as your new reader (wraps
at the size of the window); and after billions of dollars spent in the
browser war I do not expect them to have such a major aspect of
usability as how to select the text width totally wrong. Certainly it
is developed better than it was for early USENET clients (which, for
whatever it matters, ran in physical windows of fixed width (64, 80
characters etc). Thus IMHO the best of two worlds is to imitate such a
physical window with a Windows or X "window" (frame?) on your
much-higher-quality-than-in-old-good-days 19" monitor and use the so
freed screen real estate as a special bonus.

That's OK for people who don't mind adjusting window size. It doesn't
work for people like me who like to keep things simple and always have a
single maximised window and Alt-Tab between windows.

I think that the heart of the problem here is that the use of extra long
lines means that we are trying to operate Usenet with two different
standards/conventions. The original that said limit lines to 70-ish
characters, and a new 'web oriented' one that doesn't limit lines.

Chris Gordon-Smith
www.simsoup.info

 

[Chris Gordon-Smith]

I think that the heart of the problem here is that the use of extra long
lines means that we are trying to operate Usenet with two different
standards/conventions. The original that said limit lines to 70-ish
characters, and a new 'web oriented' one that doesn't limit lines.

Here is what the moderator on comp.lang.c++.moderated has to say about
it:

{ Please limit your text to fit within 80 columns, preferably around 70,
so that readers don't have to scroll horizontally to read each line.
This article has been reformatted manually by the moderator. -mod }

Chris Gordon-Smith
www.simsoup.info

 

[Rui Maciel]

Here is what the moderator on comp.lang.c++.moderated has to say about
it:

{ Please limit your text to fit within 80 columns, preferably around 70,
so that readers don't have to scroll horizontally to read each line.
This article has been reformatted manually by the moderator. -mod }

That's what moderators do: enforce arbitrary rules. There is a reason why
comp.lanc.c++ tends to have more than 10 times the traffic that
comp.lang.c++.moderated currently does.


Rui Maciel

 

[Ian Collins]

That's what moderators do: enforce arbitrary rules. There is a reason why
comp.lanc.c++ tends to have more than 10 times the traffic that
comp.lang.c++.moderated currently does.

Does it?

It did once upon a time, now the two are about equal (if you ignore the
spam).

 

[Jorgen Grahn]

That's what moderators do: enforce arbitrary rules. There is a reason why
comp.lanc.c++ tends to have more than 10 times the traffic that
comp.lang.c++.moderated currently does.

Surely you don't believe this rule has any negative effect on the
traffic to c.l.c++.m? Especially since it's not enforced: the
moderator does the dirty work, and everyone else is happy.

/Jorgen

 

[Rui Maciel]

Surely you don't believe this rule has any negative effect on the
traffic to c.l.c++.m? Especially since it's not enforced: the
moderator does the dirty work, and everyone else is happy.

I referred to the enforcement of arbitrary rules. As I've said, the
length of a line is perfectly irrelevant.

When given a choice, people naturally avoid being subjected to arbitrary
rules. If everyone was, as you said, happy with it then we would never
have ended up with two redundant newsgroups, and the unmoderated one
wouldn't ended up being the popular one while the moderated one is in its
deaths throes.


Rui Maciel

 

[Rui Maciel]

Does it?

It did once upon a time, now the two are about equal (if you ignore the
spam).

Not quite. In this month alone 191 messages, excluding spam, were posted
to clc++ while clc++m received 32.


Rui Maciel

 

[Ike Naar]

Not quite. In this month alone 191 messages, excluding spam, were posted
to clc++ while clc++m received 32.

That's what moderators do: enforce arbitrary rules. There is a reason why
comp.lanc.c++ tends to have more than 10 times the traffic that
comp.lang.c++.moderated currently does.

191 > 10 * 32 ?

 

[Rui Maciel]

191 > 10 * 32 ?

In October 2012, up to October 10th, clc++ received 191 posts while clc++m
received 32. These are the total number of posts, excluding spam, hosted by
aioe.org. As you can understand, 191/32 ~= 6.

But there are other sources of data, such as google groups. According to
google groups, in the last two months (August and September) clc++ received
1349 messages, while clc++m received in the same period only 128 posts.
Hence, 1349/128 ~= 10. But these numbers are debatable, as they include
spam.

You do the math.

https://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c++/about
https://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c++.moderated/about


Rui Maciel