par is one of the handiest text tools around. I often use it to reformat longer quotes for HN. I just wish the documentation was a little better. I can only tell you about the two or three options that i use. I do not understand all of the other possible formatting commands and I definitely have no idea why I always set

  PARINIT="rTbgqR B=.,?_A_a Q=_s>"

The first version of par was released in 1993 and the first Debian package was in 1996. The latest release will be 13 years old on Tuesday.