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> - Preserves the full 80-character width without line-wrapping, which destroys readability Readability is on the eyes of the final user, they are free to use

> - Preserves the full 80-character width without line-wrapping, which destroys readability Readability is on the eyes of the final user, they are free to use whatever narrow column width they prefer. > - Guarantees monospace, so tabular data doesn't get all misaligned When was the last time a computer shipped without a monospace font? This points at the rare occasion where there's a problem with the setup, but you could also argue that maybe there's a system with a broken image decompressor. > Screenshots are incredibly useful for keeping code and terminal output looking like code and terminal output, and not getting completely mangled in an e-mail or chat message being read on a mobile device or in a narrow column. Are you complaining about GMail's rendering maybe? Its awful[^0], but that's more of a GMail problem that could be solved if they wanted. [^0]: Column width unbounded even on 4k monitors. Weird and inconsistent font sizes across different fonts (monospace is smaller). Reads poorly on phones too.

crazygringo 1y ago
> Readability is on the eyes of the final user, they are free to use whatever narrow column width they prefer. For plaintext sure. Not for code or tabular data. It destroys indentation and destroys column alignment and interleaves parts of rows. It's a horrid mess. > When was the last time a computer shipped without a monospace font? When was the last time I have to read something in a font I can't control that is forced to be proportional? Oh, constantly. Literally all the time. > Are you complaining about GMail's rendering maybe? Yes, and messaging clients, and chat clients, and everything unless it has actual dedicated code blocks that render with a horizontal scroll bar. Which are the exception as opposed to the rule.
- dietr1ch 1y ago
  > > Readability is on the eyes of the final user, they are free to use whatever narrow column width they prefer. > For plaintext sure. Not for code or tabular data. It destroys indentation and destroys column alignment and interleaves parts of rows. It's a horrid mess. I don't think I have seen unaligned html tables, nor unaligned spreadsheets made from CSV/TSV/etc. Images are worse than PDF, so I guess it's 0-stars in the 5-star data tier. https://5stardata.info/en/ https://5stardata.info/en/
  - crazygringo 1y ago
    I'm not really sure what you're talking about. PDF...? I'm talking about tables output in the terminal, in ASCII by SQL or something. By Python's tabulate. Output from a script. Or yes, even HTML tables or spreadsheet cells that get pasted into the message client as plaintext and lose their table formatting. This isn't about a standard for publicly distributed open datasets, what are you on about? This is about quick messages in a chat or e-mail.
    - dietr1ch 1y ago
      > even HTML tables or spreadsheet cells that get pasted into the message client as plaintext and lose their table formatting. Sounds like a message client problem to me. You are switching to a worse data exchange format just to get around a very basic implementation of the paste API. Pictures are a worse exchange format than the data even a PDF or CSV, which is why I mentioned the RDF data exchange tier list, not because I'm on hard drugs. Is it convenient to send Images on whatever message client you use? Sure, but as a receiver of the data in a picture you can do nothing but type the data yourself (yeah, you can ask for the source too, but on async comm channels that may not arrive in the same day).
      - Hackbraten 1y ago
        > Sounds like a message client problem to me. More often than not, you have no control over your client thanks to proprietary protocols and interop-hostile apps. So yes, it's a message client problem, but that fact doesn't change anything.
      - crazygringo 1y ago
        > Sounds like a message client problem to me. Yes, of course it is. That's the entire point. It's a very needed workaround for most message clients, since most message clients don't support code blocks with horizontal scroll.
        unixplumber 1y ago

crazygringo 1y ago

> Readability is on the eyes of the final user, they are free to use whatever narrow column width they prefer. For plaintext sure. Not for code or tabular data. It destroys indentation and destroys column alignment and interleaves parts of rows. It's a horrid mess. > When was the last time a computer shipped without a monospace font? When was the last time I have to read something in a font I can't control that is forced to be proportional? Oh, constantly. Literally all the time. > Are you complaining about GMail's rendering maybe? Yes, and messaging clients, and chat clients, and everything unless it has actual dedicated code blocks that render with a horizontal scroll bar. Which are the exception as opposed to the rule.

dietr1ch 1y ago
> > Readability is on the eyes of the final user, they are free to use whatever narrow column width they prefer. > For plaintext sure. Not for code or tabular data. It destroys indentation and destroys column alignment and interleaves parts of rows. It's a horrid mess. I don't think I have seen unaligned html tables, nor unaligned spreadsheets made from CSV/TSV/etc. Images are worse than PDF, so I guess it's 0-stars in the 5-star data tier. https://5stardata.info/en/ https://5stardata.info/en/
- crazygringo 1y ago
  I'm not really sure what you're talking about. PDF...? I'm talking about tables output in the terminal, in ASCII by SQL or something. By Python's tabulate. Output from a script. Or yes, even HTML tables or spreadsheet cells that get pasted into the message client as plaintext and lose their table formatting. This isn't about a standard for publicly distributed open datasets, what are you on about? This is about quick messages in a chat or e-mail.
  - dietr1ch 1y ago
    > even HTML tables or spreadsheet cells that get pasted into the message client as plaintext and lose their table formatting. Sounds like a message client problem to me. You are switching to a worse data exchange format just to get around a very basic implementation of the paste API. Pictures are a worse exchange format than the data even a PDF or CSV, which is why I mentioned the RDF data exchange tier list, not because I'm on hard drugs. Is it convenient to send Images on whatever message client you use? Sure, but as a receiver of the data in a picture you can do nothing but type the data yourself (yeah, you can ask for the source too, but on async comm channels that may not arrive in the same day).
    - Hackbraten 1y ago
      > Sounds like a message client problem to me. More often than not, you have no control over your client thanks to proprietary protocols and interop-hostile apps. So yes, it's a message client problem, but that fact doesn't change anything.
    - crazygringo 1y ago
      > Sounds like a message client problem to me. Yes, of course it is. That's the entire point. It's a very needed workaround for most message clients, since most message clients don't support code blocks with horizontal scroll.
      - unixplumber 1y ago