I am involved in a consultancy project regarding establishing
National technical standards and potentially operational guidelines
for a particular educational sector within Australia.
One of the "common-sense" things (to me) to establish is a guideline
that emails should typically consist of lines no more than ~70
characters, unless the line contains quoted text (which spaces it out
a few more characters per quote) or unless the sender specifically
wants the lines to be longer - for instance to include a big table or
a long URL.
I encounted unexpected resistance to this - mainly from people who
have been using ccMail, Groupwise or Outlook for a while. So I am
preparing my arguments carefully. I won't list them all here.
For now, if Linkers can let me know, privately on on the list if they
think others will be interested, any comments on the following:
1 - Is there any formal standard regarding Internet email line
length, or was it just a "common-sense" thing that everyone
did, and the email clients did by default, so no-one figured
it was necessary to formally set a standard or guideline?
2 - Its my impression in my Internet usage since 1993 that this
problem of email clients sending each paragraph as a very
long line has only arisen in recent years, and that the clients
which can do it, and typically do it as their default
configuration, are ccMail, Novel Groupwise and certain
Microsoft programs (Outlook) - all of which have their
genesis in closed proprietary LAN email, and which were later
pressed into service for SMTP email with the Internet.
Does anyone have any impressions on this, particularly those
who have been using the Net since way before my time?
3 - Is anyone aware of any arguments for each paragraph being
a very long line terminated by a carriage return, in terms
of it being more convenient or more communicative?
The people I am working with have agreed to quite a number of other
"common-sense" operational guidelines, and they really surprised me
by opposing this one.
Regards
- Robin
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Robin Whittle rw@firstpr.com.au http://www.firstpr.com.au
Heidelberg Heights, Melbourne, Australia
First Principles Research and expression: music, Internet
music marketing, telecommunications, human
factors in technology adoption. Consumer
advocacy in telecommunications, especially
privacy. Consulting and technical writing.
Real World Electronics and software for music: eg.
Interfaces the Devil Fish mods for the TB-303.
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