Opinions on: line as a functional unit

[Jorge_Stolfi]

Seems to me that we already know that 'normal' text does not treat lines as functional units.

Actually we already know that formatting prose text with the trivial line-breaking algorithm does result different word distributions at the beginning, middle, and end of the lines.  The question that remains is how much of the "LAAFU" phenomenon on the VMS can be explained by this effect.

(The trivial line-breaking algorithm is: keep writing until the next word will not fit, then break the the line and continue.  Good scribes and good word processors may use more sophisticated algorithms, that e.g. try to avoid breaks at "bad" places.  But they too will have the effect above.)

All the best, --stolfi