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Comment by choward | Hacker News Reader

Please don't format your comments like this. Nobody is going to read it on mobile.

What's the problem, exactly? He's quoting a paragraph out of a document, and appropriately used a blockquote...

Maybe it's a bug on your phone or the HN codebase?

On mobile it doesn't wrap, and renders in a very narrow frame that must be scrolled sideways, which is a faff especially in portrait mode.

Who's he? :)

Hn doesn't support block quotes

I've always wondered why support wasn't added. It's a very simple change to add them; and everyone continuously tries-and-fails to use them. @dang et al, is there nobody on your side who can make little patches like this to "pave the well-trod path"?

> If people could understand what computing was about, the iPhone would not be a bad thing. But because people don’t understand what computing is about, they think they have it in the iPhone, and that illusion is as bad as the illusion that Guitar Hero is the same as a real guitar.

-- Alan Kay

Direct your complaints to the source of your problem, namely the shitty browsers on mobile. Even suggesting to let HN fix their abysmal stylesheet would be wrong. Go to the source -- and if it turns out they don't care about requests to provide actual tools, tell them off.

Sorry about that, but that's 78-character columns, plus two columns for indentation. It's not too wide.

Also, I hope I'm not rude to point out that I expect people interested in an article on Prolog to have a non-phone computer that they can read this more comfortably on.

I can confirm that it’s difficult to read on mobile.

I do have a laptop, of course, but I’m not always near it. Mobile web is not a niche use case in 2020.

It's still one that doesn't mesh perfectly with the WWW on less tiny form factors. You could also try turning your phone sideways.

Code blocks, in some cases, are just the simplest way to quote things. Random people on Internet forums should not have to compensate for other people not being on devices that make sense for an Internet forum.

>> Mobile web is not a niche use case in 2020.

Sure- but is it that urgent for you to read my comment right now? Can't you wait to get to your laptop?

You're right, it's not urgent—and neither is it important (as far as they know, not having read it.) So people will just scroll right by your hard-to-view comment†. And if that's the case, why bother writing it?

Would you post a comment here in a language only you speak? No, because the point of commenting is communication, and that comment wouldn't be communicating, right?

† Many people only view HN on mobile. It's a time-killing social news app; I don't want it anywhere near my workstation!

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