bug#11187: fmt: doesn't understand multibyte characters (UTF-8)

On 2026-03-03 12:10, Dmitry E. Oboukhov wrote:
> No one, ever, will use a 1970s line-wrapper to process
> petabytes

No one should use a 1970s line-wrapper, period. Which is why its 
maintenance languishes. I daresay it still exists primarily because it'd 
be a hassle to remove it. And I say that as someone who actually *used* 
fmt routinely, five or so decades ago, as a sort of plugin for vi, 
though even then when I wanted serious formatting I used troff. Nowadays 
of course there's no real reason to use for fmt, as text editors now do 
that stuff for you.

Although I enjoyed the rants, such talents for invective are wasted on 
useless programs like fmt. If you can't supply a good patch for fmt, 
please at least use those talents on a more worthy target. cp, say.