This is why we need markup languages like HTML. Inevitably people will want different widths paragraphs due to different devices, preferences, etc. Just because some people use HTML badly doesn't mean we need to go back to text.
Deviate too much from this and readability suffers.
Edit: adequate whitespace in the margins is important too.
Also, all viewers would have to support it, which somewhat defeats the purpose of using plain text.
8 spaces is fine.
> For example, you need to handle bullet points.
Asterisks are fine.
> Also, all viewers would have to support it, which somewhat defeats the purpose of using plain text.
I think that you're over thinking what plain text is. I don't mean "plain text with some additions". I really do just mean plain text.
I'm not talking tab characters, I'm talking indentation of whole paragraphs with plain spaces, as seen in the article. Most existing viewers just wrap long lines so that the wrapped content is unindented: this makes any indentation hard to notice and mostly useless. For your proposition to be viable, viewing software has to detect indentation and keep that indentation in wrapped lines.
> Asterisks are fine.
Ok, but usually you want to indent the wrapped contents by 2 columns otherwise asterisks become hard to notice. This is only possible with special magic in the viewer.
--- BEGIN MESSAGE ---
--- BEGIN BLOCK QUOTE ---
--- BEGIN BLOCK QUOTE ---
I'm not talking tab characters, I'm talking indentation of whole paragraphs
with plain spaces, as seen in the article.
--- END BLOCK QUOTE ---
Ah, okay. You're right, indenting an entire paragraph is hard.
--- BEGIN BLOCK QUOTE ---
This is the kind of thing they'd do on Usenet.
--- END BLOCK QUOTE ---
--- END BLOCK QUOTE ---
All you get is a very verbose markup language :-)
--- END MESSAGE ---Ah, okay. You're right, indenting an entire paragraph is hard.
--- BEGIN BLOCK QUOTE ---
This is the kind of thing they'd do on Usenet.
---END BLOCK QUOTE ---
It looks terrible, and I didn't read it, effectively falsifying the article.
But the strong microbrew renaissance going on right now is producing some of my favorite beers. Beers with the same depth and complexity as the finest of wines--he said, opinionatedly.
Now, I've learned that this experimental attitude towards beer is highly American. I don't think I've seen anywhere else in the world, except maybe Belgium, that is quite as crazy and experimental with what they put in their beers. After all, who in their right minds would like sour beers?
If you think the beer situation in the US is poor try out some Russian River, Boulevard, or Elysian brews and come back to me.
nano -W --fill=65 filename.txt
I like the playfulness of these pages (the original and this parody) and I hope both authors achieve their aims.
That's why I suggested gqip on every paragraph, but I'm sure there are more efficient ways.
Long lines and wrapping within the text viewer is probably your best bet.
I assume you made the line breaks manually, but it IMHO looks better if you let a decent algorithm do it.
Most Unix systems should have fmt, but par is better. If you are a vim user, just hit gqip inside of every paragraph.
The manual of par [1] has an example that shows the superiority of a dynamic programming algorithm (par, TeX) over a greedy algorithm (fmt, aprox. format manually).
[1] http://www.nicemice.net/par/par-doc.var