On 02-Dec-19 08:09, John Levine wrote:
> In article <1a1726cf-70a0-019d-1138-c5e22f258d4d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 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.
Keith is right and it was one of Postel+Reynolds's wiser decisions. The only case where it goes wrong is with software or printers that fail to recognise the FF (form feed) character correctly.
Phill is correct that it wastes some white space; that's the price of fitting into both paper sizes. When I print drafts, which is rarely, I do it "booklet" style which limits waste paper considerably.
As we discussed 3 years ago, numbered pagination is useful in a printable format but irrelevant in a screen-only format.
Can we stop now?
Brian
>
>> What would be parochial would be to assume that nobody in the world
>> needs to print RFCs using mechanical printers any more - that everyone
>> in the world should have laser printers, ample power for their fusers,
>> and a generous supply of suitable paper and toner -
>
> I think that if you price all the printers made in the past decade or
> two, you'll find that there are a lot of laser and inkjet printers and
> close to nothing else, certainly nothing restricted to fixed pitch
> text. The only mechanical printers I recall seeing in recent years
> are antique Okidata dot matrix units printing whatever it is they
> print at airport gates.
>
> R's,
> John
>
>
