On Wed, 15 Oct 2025 10:37:26 +0100, Water Fountain wrote:   
      
   > Cellphone user  writes:   
   >   
   >> anon@urmom.com posted:   
   >>   
   >> I've always used some the '90s the 80 monospace character Width, and   
   >> I've always read newsgroups that way.   
   >>   
   >> I'm not sure where you guys are taking the 76 to 72 characters thing?   
   >   
   > Am on Emacs using Gnus, and on it I get a warning that the post is   
   > longer than 79 characters if it goes beyond that. It makes sense on a 80   
   > characters limit for the extra quote character.   
   > The 76 or 72 numbers are news to me.   
      
   That makes sense from the more recent RFC 5322   
   https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc5322#section-2.1.1   
      
   | The more conservative 78 character recommendation is to accommodate   
   | the many implementations of user interfaces that display these   
   | messages which may truncate, or disastrously wrap, the display   
   | of more than 78 characters per line, in spite of the fact that   
   | such implementations are non-conformant to the intent of this   
   | specification (and that of [RFC5321] if they actually cause   
   | information to be lost).  Again, even though this limitation is   
   | put on messages, it is incumbent upon implementations that display   
   | messages to handle an arbitrarily large number of characters in   
   | a line (certainly at least up to the 998 character limit) for the   
   | sake of robustness.   
      
   Going back to more historical context as mentioned in RFC 3676 where the 8   
   character buffer was viewed as safer for preserving a neat message format.   
   https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc3676#section-4.2   
      
   | When generating Format=Flowed text, lines SHOULD be 78 characters or   
   | shorter, including any trailing white space and also including any   
   | space added as part of stuffing (see Section 4.4).  As suggested   
   | values, any paragraph longer than 78 characters in total length   
   | could be wrapped using lines of 72 or fewer characters.  While the   
   | specific line length used is a matter of aesthetics and preference,   
   | longer lines are more likely to require rewrapping and to encounter   
   | difficulties with older mailers.  (It has been suggested that 66   
   | character lines are the most readable.)   
   |   
   | The restriction to 78 or fewer characters between CRLFs on the wire   
   | is to conform to [MSG-FMT].   
   |   
   | (In addition to conformance to [MSG-FMT], there is a historical need   
   | that all lines, even when displayed by a non-flowed-aware program,   
   | will fit in a standard 79- or 80-column screen without having to   
   | be wrapped.  The limit is 78, not 79 or 80, because while 79 or 80   
   | fit on a line, the last column is often reserved for a line-wrap   
   | indicator.)   
      
   Old DEC video terminals supported 80 columns of text. As an example:   
   | The VT52 provided a screen of 24 rows and 80 columns of text   
   | and supported all 95 ASCII characters as well as 32 graphics   
   | characters, bi-directional scrolling, and an expanded control   
   | character system. DEC produced a series of upgraded VT52s with   
   | additional hardware for various uses.   
      
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VT52   
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VT52#/media/File:Terminal-dec-vt52.jpg   
      
   I believe this is just a continuation of the IBM 80-column format used   
   with FORTRAN punch cards.   
      
   | For each of the twelve rows of the card, 72 of the 80 columns,   
   | skipping the other eight, would be read into two 36-bit words,   
   | requiring 864 bits to store the whole card; a control panel was   
   | used to select the 72 columns to be read. Software would translate   
   | this data into the desired form. One convention was to use columns   
   | 1 through 72 for data, and columns 73 through 80 to sequentially   
   | number the cards, as shown in the picture above of a punched card   
   | for FORTRAN. Such numbered cards could be sorted by machine so that   
   | if a deck was dropped the sorting machine could be used to arrange   
   | it back in order. This convention continued to be used in FORTRAN,   
   | even in later systems where the data in all 80 columns could be read.   
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punched_card#IBM_80-   
   column_format_and_character_codes   
   https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/   
   IBM1130CopyCard.agr.jpg   
      
      
   There is also the line break or line feed which may be relevant to how the   
   terminal with an 80 column limit is going to wrap text. If it appears that   
   you used up 78 characters and then throw in the `> ` quote characters to   
   max out at 80, a message sent from a Windows device probably appends 2   
   byte \r\n (carriage return and line feed). That might result in unintended   
   empty lines or weird formatting.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)