Hi, I know of at least two people who still use DOS regularly and at least one who uses a 486. Unfortunately, DOS doesn't handle very long lines as I know from personal experience. I would ask PG to please continue using the same text format with line breaks. Conversion of line endings can be done easily when unzipping the file or with any of several utilities on any OS. Before people tell me how DOS is old and no one should use it in their right mind, I would like to say that the people I know of simply can't afford anything else and in most cases lack the computer skills. Yes, Linux runs on a 486 but they don't want to learn a new OS. Also, they are blind. That in itself isn't relevant but a screen reader by itself costs at least $795 in most cases. Most blind people have a very small income and can't afford a new Windows computer. There are some free screen readers but they still require XP or better. With that said, for most people, long lines aren't a problem and I realize that PG can't please all of the people all of the time. Those same DOS users are also on dial-up. For various reasons, html viewing in DOS isn't practical. On 9/10/2009 4:28 PM, Greg M. Johnson wrote:

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2) My only recommendation in this debate is this: There is no longer a need for a hard line break at every 80 character line. However, I believe there is still a need for a hard line break between paragraphs.

Completely agreed. That was the gist of my original proposal.

Another question is whether today's most primitive TXT-reading softwares now come with wraparound-- and by this I mean "terminal editors" like emacs and vi. Or what is the most primitive device in use today-- is it a 1980 Win 3.1 'puter, perhaps the itouch (in some regards)?

Another idea is whether we could tolerate another format. If we've already got half a dozen, why not have another that is "non-80 plain text" (defined above by Jay).