On Jan 07, 2025, Didier Kryn wrote:
> Le 07/01/2025 à 00:06, o1bigtenor via Dng a écrit :
> > Trying to learn something from reading threads - - - -
> >
> > Why would the lines be too long - - - - more than 80 characters isn't
> > tolerated - - - or ???????????
>
>     I try to keep everything within 80 chars wide, possibly overriding a
> little bit for things like HTML, never for programming languages. Longer
> lines tend to be hard to read. Did you notice that in books and
> newspapers, lines are kept relatively short. When a line is too long
> it becomes hazardous for the eye to go to the next, at least for me. I
> suppose its the reason why text formatting tools support multicolumn.
>
>     If you open any free software source file, you will notice that it
> also fits in 80 columns. Always. So it isn't just me.

I think I've come across some that run wide, though that might just be
due to bad naming conventions "required" by the language (things like
org.sun.java.xyzzy.some.other.widget).

But otherwise I wholeheartedly agree that line-breaks at ~80 columns are
quite reasonable for the sake of readability. I have my editor
hard-break at 72 (or the nearest whitespace before 72, in the event of a
long word), as that seems to work best with mailing lists and other
places where formatting will be prefixed.

It does admittedly take some getting used to if you're more accustomed
to flowed text that defaults to take the entire width of your screen --
I remember being confused at the "poor" formatting of RFCs the first
time I was introduced to them back in highschool ...

--
|_|O|_|
|_|_|O| Github: https://github.com/dpurgert
|O|O|O| PGP: DDAB 23FB 19FA 7D85 1CC1 E067 6D65 70E5 4CE7 2860