Mailing List Etiquette was freebsd vs. netbsd

[Polytropon]

On Tue, 16 Jun 2020 16:32:25 +0200, Chris Knipe wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 16, 2020 at 4:27 PM Aryeh Friedman <aryeh.friedman at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> 
> 
> > It doesn't evolve as fast you *THINK* it does for example our system
> > supports over 200 different doctor offices/practices and about 10% still
> > use Windows XP at 1024x768 and *REFUSE* to move to anything newer even
> > after being told that using anything older than Windows 8  is an automatic
> > HIPAA violation (DHS OCR [the office that oversees HIPAA enforcement] has
> > said anything that lacks active vendor support is an automatic
> > violation).   About another 20% use Windows 7 and also refuse to upgrade.
> > The console for the monitors (rarely used directly by anyone except for us
> > the programmers) is 24x80 via a USB connector.   So yes such screen sizes
> > are an issue for us.
> >
> >
> 
> Apples vs. Pears.  Even XP, supports HTML email, even XP supports rendering
> emails wider than 80 characters.

If you mean "Windows XP", it doesn't support anything of that.
Programs do, and you usually have to install them before you
can use them.



> Some of my code is GUI, running on 7", or 14" monitors.  Nothing forces my
> -code- to be 80 characters wide.  Yes, the -rendering- is a different
> story, the -code- is not.

Absolutely correct. There are people who state that code
should end in a specific column to be considered "good code",
but the problem again is that this is not a 1:1 relation.
Bad code can be more or less than 80 columns, so can good
code. Code quality cannot solely be judged by line width.
And you can cheat when you use the tab character: From the
default 8 colums, set the display to 2 columns and you can
write more code. :-)

As I mentioned people with limited eyesight and people who
are blind, there are those with no spare money to buy new
big screens. And even if they did, physical screen size is
not the only parameter, as I already explained (resolution
and font sizes etc.). There are those who cannot easily move
their head, but need to sit near the monitor: Forcing them
to painfully more left - right - left - right - left - right
so read extremely long lines intead of just moving their
eyes to read narrower text is definitely nothing one should
perceive as desired.

You are probably old enough to know what a newspaper is.
Is the regular text arranged in long lines across the paper?
No, it is arranged in columns of specific widths. This is
done for several reasons. One important one is readability.

And mailing lists offer the flexibility to readably fit
in many settings (even non-visual ones!).

And after all, shouldn't readability one of the primary
goals when posting to a mailing list? I mean, there's always
an intention: I have a problem, I seek help, therefore I have
to explain the problem to readers who will hopefully be able
and willing to show me how to solve the problem. Forcing them
to go to external resources, to watch ads and web videos, to
reveal their identity to web trackers or register to services
with their credit card and "Facebook" login to see a little
code snippet is... well, I don't think it sounds right...



-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...