Hello David -- What you describe as been a problem since before 1980
when Xerox began dumping those long long lines (Hole Paragraphs per
line) onto the ARPAnet, and claimed that our non-folding display systems
were broken. Kind of reminds me of the current 8-bit SMTP situation.
I thought all that had been resolved by putting aline chopper in the
gateway, though every now and then I still get a message from a
colleague at Xerox with those long lines in it. Still ugly to read!
So, le tme make a social impacts kind of point about this.
When X and Y are trying to comminucate, the responsibility is on both X
and Y to do so in a way that helps them to understand each other. Now,
lets suppose that X is a salesperson and Y is a potential customer.
Now, which of these two is responsible for sending the other the right
kind of lines (the kind that look good on the recipients display without
manual recipient intervention)?
I leave the answer to the students...\Stef