P3D Re: Rick Inzero comments on line lengths

[roberts@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (John W Roberts)]

>Date: Fri, 30 Jan 1998 06:48:28 -0700
>From: "Peter van Zuijlekom" <pzuijlekom@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: P3D Re: Rick Inzero comments on line lengths

>     I absolutely disagree with you on this subject.

No, you don't. You don't know what my views are on the subject. (That's
one bad habit that sometimes causes problems on this list - you don't
make it clear who you're addressing. If you had quoted a small part of
Rick's post, it would have been apparent that you were addressing Rick.

A second bad habit - you put five spaces at the beginning of each line
of your message. If I want to quote a small part of your post to
illustrate a point, and I want to reformat it to reduce the total line
count (for example, if the quote started with the last word on a line),
those spaces at the beginning of each line make it difficult to reformat
the lines. Why artificially increase the number of lines in a post
by inserting unneeded spaces? It just reduces the amount of text I can
see at one time.

>     And you tell me this is off-topic ?

This is a third bad habit, which typically causes much more trouble
than the first two. You (Peter) are reading something into the original
message which was never stated. (Unless Rick also sent you a private
email, to which you should reply privately to Rick.) (Before you ask,
there are no hidden messages in this post - it means only what it says.)
     
>     If you are one of those who never read your own messages
>     back again, you won't be hit by this phenomenae, but 
>     if you do your utmost to read everything that is
>     published on this list, which I do, it's a real annoyance
>     to scroll to the right for 400, 500 or even more than
>     700 characters, I can assure you. 

People who set their readers to "wrap" mode are unlikely to notice this
problem in any message, unless they try to edit one.

>     So what's up ?  
>     Reaction of the moderators ? Anyone else ?

I agree with you that it's a problem, but it serves little or no purpose
to make a generic complaint about it, because the people who are doing it
generally have no idea that they are. If you were to send a message to
each person whose postings cause problems for your reader, at least they
would be aware that there's a problem they need to address. By doing so,
you could perform a useful service for this list.

John R (who hits <Enter> at the end of each line)


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