I was trying to create a text file on my floppy which would
be readable (i.e. have the appropriate line breaks) by Windows
Notepad.

I mounted my floppy as vfat and created a small text file
with vi, which I saved back onto the floppy. Then, when I
examined the file with cat -A I saw that each line was still
being terminated with a '\n' instead of the hoped-for '\r\n'
sequence.

I know there are tools for making such conversions, but I
was under the impression that if something was mounted
as vfat, the conversion would take place automatically.

Was I under the wrong impression, or is there something
wrong here?

Thank you.

nothing is wrong there except that you were in the wrong impression that by mounting as vfat t will create the file in dos style. there are tools like unix2dos and dos2unix that convert the file format from one to other and vice versa. see if they are there in your distro. if not download it from the net. ATB.

Text files are text files. May it be Linux or window$.

My C program files work as the same on both linux and window$.

text files are text files, but you can run into problems at the line break. DOS, Mac, and Nix all use a different carriage-return character.

Thank you for the info.
I thought I read somewhere that the conversion would be automatic.
That's why I was surprised to see that it wasn't.