On Friday, 6 November 2020 at 0:04:28 -0500, John Cowan wrote: > On Thu, Nov 5, 2020 at 8:41 PM Larry McVoy wrote: > >> I click but I mostly live in terminal windows. Which are all 80 >> columns because that's the right width (I can go on and on about >> that). > > Aw, c'mon. You're going to tell us that the number of punch holes > that IBM could fit on a punch card in 1928 that was exactly the size > of the dollar bill used in the U.S. from 1862 to 1923 so that it > could be stored in a mechanical cash register is miraculously the > Right Thing when it comes to reading monospaced text on a screen? I think you're jumping to conclusions. The importance of 80 characters (for small values of 80) is that it's a comfortable text width for human eyes. Your message adheres to the rule, presumably not because you were thinking of punched cards. Was the US $ bill really that big in those days? > I think that's asking a bit much of ol' man Coincidence. Arguably the coincidence was the other way round. Greg -- Sent from my desktop computer. Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key. See complete headers for address and phone numbers. This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA