Subj : Desired Living Document (section): Author Compliance
To   : mark lewis
From : Rob Swindell
Date : Mon Apr 15 2019 02:45 am

  Re: Desired Living Document (section): Author Compliance
  By: mark lewis to Rob Swindell on Sun Apr 14 2019 09:10 am

 >
 >  On 2019 Apr 14 01:32:20, you wrote to me:
 >
 >  ON>>> That would make ^aCOLS: 80^m make a little more sence ;)
 >
 >  ml>> i don't know... i understand it for what it is intended to be used
 >  ml>> for but why  do i want to display a message artifically restricted to
 >  ml>> 80cols on my 125  character wide terminal?
 >
 >  RS> Sorry, but you don't understand the intention of those control line
 >  RS> then. I'd be happy to discuss it.
 >
 > maybe i don't fully understand it, then... why would i or my terminal care  about the width of the original writer's screen i
 > we're not going to use that  value on our end some how?

It has nothing to do with artificially restricting anything. It allows an intelligent message viewer (e.g. Synchronet) to re-wrap
messages for nice display by knowing the difference between a 39 character line of text that was:
a. that length because of the result of a word-wrapping due to being written with a 40 column terminal, or
b. that length because the author intended for the line to be short (e.g. drawing a table)

It allows an intelligent viewer to make *more* use of the available columns to display messages while retaining the formatting
originally intended (hopefully) by the message's author.

.