Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting
John C Klensin <john-ietf@jck.com> Thu, 05 December 2019 06:54 UTC
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Date: Thu, 05 Dec 2019 01:54:32 -0500
From: John C Klensin <john-ietf@jck.com>
To: rfc-interest@ietf.org, ietf@ietf.org
cc: moore@network-heretics.com
Subject: Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting
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--On Sunday, December 1, 2019 14:09 -0500 John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> wrote: > In article > <1a1726cf-70a0-019d-1138-c5e22f258d4d@network-heretics.com> > you write: >> I thought the format was a compromise between US Letter >> format, A4 format, and printers. > > I thought it was 72 characters because that's how many you got > on a punch card, leaving 8 for the sequence number. I had really hoped to avoid getting into this, but Keith is right. There may well have been other considerations and, if there were, any comments about which was the most important would be close to pure speculation. One would have to ask Jon or Joyce to get a definitive answer and that would be very difficult. However, I was involved in conversations in which Jon pointed out that, since A4 paper was narrower and longer than letter size, the appropriate thing to do was to determine print area width on the basis of A4 and length on the basis of letter-size. He also considered side margins of about a half inch to be the minimum acceptable. At the nominal ten characters per inch, a 72 character line come out as 7.2 inches. And half inch margins on both sides and one gets 8.2 inches. A4 is 210 mm wide or 8.27 inches. It would be incorrect to assume that is a coincidence. If one were making the same decisions with today's technology and ideas about aesthetics, the answers might well be different. But it is incorrect to assume that issues like international differences in papers sizes were unknown or deliberately ignored. best, john
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting John C Klensin
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting Carsten Bormann
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting John Levine
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting Claudio Allocchio
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting Paul Hoffman
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting Julian Reschke
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting Jeffrey Yasskin
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting Brian E Carpenter
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting Marc Petit-Huguenin
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting Paul Hoffman
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting John C Klensin
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting Julian Reschke
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting Keith Moore
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting John C Klensin
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting Brian E Carpenter
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting Keith Moore
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting Bob Hinden
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting Julian Reschke
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting Carsten Bormann
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting Keith Moore
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting Julian Reschke
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting John C Klensin
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting Carsten Bormann
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting John Levine
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting Julian Reschke
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting Julian Reschke
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting Henrik Levkowetz
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting Carsten Bormann
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting Keith Moore
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting Joel M. Halpern
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting Keith Moore
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting Henrik Levkowetz
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting Keith Moore
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting John C Klensin
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting Joel Halpern Direct
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting Phillip Hallam-Baker
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting Nick Hilliard
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting Keith Moore
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting Scott O. Bradner
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting Eric Heflin
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting Paul Hoffman
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting Keith Moore
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting John Levine
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting John C Klensin
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting Scott O. Bradner
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting Scott O. Bradner
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting Brian E Carpenter
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting Scott O. Bradner
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting Julian Reschke
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting Brian Carpenter
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting Salz, Rich
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting John C Klensin
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting Carsten Bormann
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting Salz, Rich
- Handling HTAB in artwork/sourcecode, was: [art] N… Julian Reschke
- Re: Handling HTAB in artwork/sourcecode, was: [ar… John C Klensin
- Re: Handling HTAB in artwork/sourcecode, was: [ar… Carsten Bormann
- Re: Handling HTAB in artwork/sourcecode, was: [ar… John C Klensin
- Re: Handling HTAB in artwork/sourcecode, was: [ar… Julian Reschke
- Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting John C Klensin