4 ms·

> Safari is doing the sane and normal thing - soft-wrapping text, because most sane people do not hard-wrap their text, for obvious reasons. It breaks poems, c

by bmacho 2y ago

> Safari is doing the sane and normal thing - soft-wrapping text, because most sane people do not hard-wrap their text, for obvious reasons. It breaks poems, code, ascii art, emails, man page, and probably much more that I can't think of. It is only the right choice for plain text books. But you are right in that Safari on iPhone should choose a behaviour, and it will be bad for some things, since plain text is used for a wide variety of things. To be noted, on windows + touchpad, you have 2 different zooms (in Edge and in Firefox at least): a font zoom and a pinch zoom. So on notebooks, both fixed-length text files, and both book type text files are readable.

throw10920 2y ago
> It breaks poems Which almost always have short lines and are almost never actually broken by soft-wrapping for any reasonable viewport size > code Which shouldn't be hard-wrapped in the first place > ascii art Which usually also have short lines, and if it gets wrapped, you can zoom out (which you usually want to in order to see the ASCII art anyway) > emails Which shouldn't be hard-wrapped in the first place either > man page Which also shouldn't be hard-wrapped in the first place Half of the things that you're talking about are not broken by Safari, they're broken by hard wrapping (and the other two are unlikely to be broken in the first place and make up a tiny minority of content). As stated upwards, hard-wrapping is incorrect almost everywhere. (poems and ASCII art are not "hard wrapping" because the linebreaks are part of the content, and adding the required newlines is not "hard wrapping" any more than adding a newline between paragraphs is "hard wrapping") > It is only the right choice for plain text books. It's always the right choice, because it wastes screen space and causes reading headaches because you do not have a crystal ball and you do not know the user's screen dimensions and font size. If you hard-wrap to 80 characters and the user's viewport size (whether for web browsers or terminals, doesn't matter) is 160 characters, you are wasting 50% of their screen space by hard-wrapping. If you hard-wrap to 80 and their viewport is 79, you are also wasting 50% of their screen because every other line will have a lone character on it, which also causes massive reading problems. These statements are factual. > To be noted, on windows + touchpad, you have 2 different zooms (in Edge and in Firefox at least): a font zoom and a pinch zoom. So on notebooks, both fixed-length text files, and both book type text files are readable. This is a useful feature in general - but it does not excuse hard-wrapping. Not all platforms have these features (and they're unavailable in terminals), and imposes the author's column width on the user. If I want more than 80 columns of text, I should be able to get it.
- bmacho 2y ago
  > Which shouldn't be hard-wrapped in the first place If by "hard-wrapped" you mean having a fixed-style, then all poems, code, emails, ascii-art should be hard-wrapped, and are hard-wrapped. If not, then I don't have any idea what are you talking about.
  - throw10920 2y ago
    > you mean having a fixed-style This is confusing and meaningless. The only reasonable definition of "hard wrapping" is "you insert linebreaks were not previously present into content in order to fit a specific number of columns", and under that nothing should be hard-wrapped. People never call ASCII art or poems "hard-wrapped", or say that code is "hard-wrapped" when you add natural line breaks at the ends of lines (e.g. "if (cond) {\n" or on web "<p>if (cond) {</p>") because that's not how people use that term. Poems and ASCII-art aren't hard-wrapped by definition because the line-breaks are already present as part of the content itself. For the code and emails, I already conclusively showed why those are bad.
    - bmacho 2y ago
      I see. Then what I wrote, still stands, that is: >> There's zero excuse for hard-wrapping - it actively makes the lives of readers worse. Safari is doing the sane and normal thing - soft-wrapping text, because most sane people do not hard-wrap their text, for obvious reasons. > It breaks poems, code, ascii art, emails, man page, and probably much more that I can't think of. The alternative of safari's soft wrapping is not "hard wrapping" (which, since Safari is a display, would be the same as soft wrapping), but not wrapping at all, letting the line to go out. Which would be the right thing for poems, code, ascii art, emails, man pages, letters, any structured text, and probably much more.
      - throw10920 2y ago
        Oh, I misunderstood - you're right, "not wrapping"/"scrolling" is indeed the right option in this case. I forgot that that was an option. My apologies!

by bmacho 2y ago

throw10920 2y ago

> It breaks poems Which almost always have short lines and are almost never actually broken by soft-wrapping for any reasonable viewport size > code Which shouldn't be hard-wrapped in the first place > ascii art Which usually also have short lines, and if it gets wrapped, you can zoom out (which you usually want to in order to see the ASCII art anyway) > emails Which shouldn't be hard-wrapped in the first place either > man page Which also shouldn't be hard-wrapped in the first place Half of the things that you're talking about are not broken by Safari, they're broken by hard wrapping (and the other two are unlikely to be broken in the first place and make up a tiny minority of content). As stated upwards, hard-wrapping is incorrect almost everywhere. (poems and ASCII art are not "hard wrapping" because the linebreaks are part of the content, and adding the required newlines is not "hard wrapping" any more than adding a newline between paragraphs is "hard wrapping") > It is only the right choice for plain text books. It's always the right choice, because it wastes screen space and causes reading headaches because you do not have a crystal ball and you do not know the user's screen dimensions and font size. If you hard-wrap to 80 characters and the user's viewport size (whether for web browsers or terminals, doesn't matter) is 160 characters, you are wasting 50% of their screen space by hard-wrapping. If you hard-wrap to 80 and their viewport is 79, you are also wasting 50% of their screen because every other line will have a lone character on it, which also causes massive reading problems. These statements are factual. > To be noted, on windows + touchpad, you have 2 different zooms (in Edge and in Firefox at least): a font zoom and a pinch zoom. So on notebooks, both fixed-length text files, and both book type text files are readable. This is a useful feature in general - but it does not excuse hard-wrapping. Not all platforms have these features (and they're unavailable in terminals), and imposes the author's column width on the user. If I want more than 80 columns of text, I should be able to get it.

bmacho 2y ago
> Which shouldn't be hard-wrapped in the first place If by "hard-wrapped" you mean having a fixed-style, then all poems, code, emails, ascii-art should be hard-wrapped, and are hard-wrapped. If not, then I don't have any idea what are you talking about.
- throw10920 2y ago
  > you mean having a fixed-style This is confusing and meaningless. The only reasonable definition of "hard wrapping" is "you insert linebreaks were not previously present into content in order to fit a specific number of columns", and under that nothing should be hard-wrapped. People never call ASCII art or poems "hard-wrapped", or say that code is "hard-wrapped" when you add natural line breaks at the ends of lines (e.g. "if (cond) {\n" or on web "<p>if (cond) {</p>") because that's not how people use that term. Poems and ASCII-art aren't hard-wrapped by definition because the line-breaks are already present as part of the content itself. For the code and emails, I already conclusively showed why those are bad.
  - bmacho 2y ago
    I see. Then what I wrote, still stands, that is: >> There's zero excuse for hard-wrapping - it actively makes the lives of readers worse. Safari is doing the sane and normal thing - soft-wrapping text, because most sane people do not hard-wrap their text, for obvious reasons. > It breaks poems, code, ascii art, emails, man page, and probably much more that I can't think of. The alternative of safari's soft wrapping is not "hard wrapping" (which, since Safari is a display, would be the same as soft wrapping), but not wrapping at all, letting the line to go out. Which would be the right thing for poems, code, ascii art, emails, man pages, letters, any structured text, and probably much more.
    - throw10920 2y ago
      Oh, I misunderstood - you're right, "not wrapping"/"scrolling" is indeed the right option in this case. I forgot that that was an option. My apologies!