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> Have none of you ever worked for a designer or marketing person who was unwilling to accept that a bit of text might wrap on Windows (Arial), but fit on one l

> Have none of you ever worked for a designer or marketing person who was unwilling to accept that a bit of text might wrap on Windows (Arial), but fit on one line on a Mac (Helvetica)? > Until we can get the major operating systems to include some of the most popular open-source fonts, we're stuck with web fonts. This really seems to be a problem with marketing and design people; we're not stuck with webfonts. We're stuck with unreasonable people.

esonderegger 10y ago
I tend to agree with you, but I think it's important to constantly be trying to understand where other people are coming from. They might not be so unreasonable; they just have different priorities than we do. Our idea of what a webpage is might be a text document where the presentation is less important than the content. To others, the presentation IS the content. For some people, it might depend on what message the page is trying to convey.
- alanh 10y ago
  Where you are wrong, I think, is that “the presentation IS the content” is a common belief among “designers” but almost never the belief of users.
  - myrion 10y ago
    That's not really true. They won't consciously believe that, but they won't use the technically superior product, if the competitor has the basics and a better design.
hyperpape 10y ago
Many people in our profession write code that's less that 80 characters per line because that's how much you could display on terminals in the 70s. As a profession, we can't complain that someone might be bothered by the idea of word-wrapping.
- zeveb 10y ago
  > Many people in our profession write code that's less that 80 characters per line because that's how much you could display on terminals in the 70s. It's _also_ a very reasonable & readable amount of text in a row. There's nothing wrong with that.
  - zzzcpan 10y ago
    > It's _also_ a very reasonable & readable amount of text in a row Presumably, that's why they used 80 characters in the first place, as anything more is too hard to read.
    - Gruselbauer 10y ago
      Isn't it more so it is readable inside a phone display to an ssh session as well as a fat 4K screen? That's my reason at least. Can always scale up something, but line breaks I didn't make myself make me want to commit unspeakable atrocities in the name of a demonic deity taking the earthly form of a little girl. Or, you know, angry.
    - TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
      132 column displays were common by the end of the 1970s. 80 column displays date back to the early 1970s. I started coding on an 80 column display, and I have no doubt at all that a modern 16:9 monitor that can display a double page PDF or a web page with a variety of fonts is a much better display device.
    - lmm 10y ago
      It was 80 columns to match a punch card, AIUI, not a decision on readability grounds at all.
      - robotresearcher 10y ago
        And why was a punch card 80 columns?

esonderegger 10y ago

I tend to agree with you, but I think it's important to constantly be trying to understand where other people are coming from. They might not be so unreasonable; they just have different priorities than we do. Our idea of what a webpage is might be a text document where the presentation is less important than the content. To others, the presentation IS the content. For some people, it might depend on what message the page is trying to convey.

alanh 10y ago
Where you are wrong, I think, is that “the presentation IS the content” is a common belief among “designers” but almost never the belief of users.
- myrion 10y ago
  That's not really true. They won't consciously believe that, but they won't use the technically superior product, if the competitor has the basics and a better design.

hyperpape 10y ago

Many people in our profession write code that's less that 80 characters per line because that's how much you could display on terminals in the 70s. As a profession, we can't complain that someone might be bothered by the idea of word-wrapping.

zeveb 10y ago
> Many people in our profession write code that's less that 80 characters per line because that's how much you could display on terminals in the 70s. It's _also_ a very reasonable & readable amount of text in a row. There's nothing wrong with that.
- zzzcpan 10y ago
  > It's _also_ a very reasonable & readable amount of text in a row Presumably, that's why they used 80 characters in the first place, as anything more is too hard to read.
  - Gruselbauer 10y ago
    Isn't it more so it is readable inside a phone display to an ssh session as well as a fat 4K screen? That's my reason at least. Can always scale up something, but line breaks I didn't make myself make me want to commit unspeakable atrocities in the name of a demonic deity taking the earthly form of a little girl. Or, you know, angry.
  - TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
    132 column displays were common by the end of the 1970s. 80 column displays date back to the early 1970s. I started coding on an 80 column display, and I have no doubt at all that a modern 16:9 monitor that can display a double page PDF or a web page with a variety of fonts is a much better display device.
  - lmm 10y ago
    It was 80 columns to match a punch card, AIUI, not a decision on readability grounds at all.
    - robotresearcher 10y ago
      And why was a punch card 80 columns?