From: Chip Salzenberg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2006 15:07:16 -0700
On Mon, Aug 21, 2006 at 07:28:14PM +0200, Leopold Toetsch wrote:
> 80, or 100, or 132 are all some arbitrary limits. But the latter is
already
> inconvenient on a 12" powermac with reasonable font size [1].
That's an interesting and modern metric: minimum common screen size divided
by minimum readable font size. (For me that comes out to 150 columns; a 12"
display triggers my claustrophobia.)
That equation gives you a line length, but does it give you readability?
Can you comfortably read English (or whatever) text at that size if the
lines are strung out along 150 columns? I would prefer two-column
layout in that case . . . or a font large enough to reduce the text
width to, say, 80 columns again. (In fact, my preferred editing config
is a pair of side-by-side 80-column Emacs instances on a 19" screen.)
And then there is the effect of long lines on code. I am often
forced to break or refactor long code lines, which means I have to
figure out where to break them, which means I'm adding information by
doing so.
So maybe it would be more palatable to think of 80 columns as the
"Hollerith Discipline" . . . ;-}
> [1] "reasonable" for the old eyes of folks that actually have punched
> hollerith cards, when they were younger, like e.g. yours sincerly
Right there with you. My school's punch card machines were in the same room
as the TRS-80 Model I ("THE COMPUTER ROOM") . . .
We had a Mainframe, complete with attendant priesthood . . . and *lots*
of keypunches scattered over campus for the laity, who were not allowed
into the inner sanctum.
-- Bob Rogers
http://rgrjr.dyndns.org/
