[TUHS] 80 columns ...

[steffen@sdaoden.eu (Steffen Nurpmeso)]

Dan Cross <crossd at gmail.com> wrote:
 |On Wed, Nov 8, 2017 at 4:02 PM, Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
 |> On Wed, Nov 08, 2017 at 08:52:03PM +0000, ron minnich wrote:
 |>> So, 80 column folks, would you find this
 |>> a(b,
 |>> c,
 |>> d)
 |>>
 |>> more readable than
 |>> a(b,c,d)

Someone who is no longer on this list said to the same topic to
me, in October:

  Wer zu schnell nach Rechts kommt, strukturiert zu wenig ;-)

  Who approaches the right too fast, does not structure enough

More or less.  In the context that i turned to space indentation
when i started using C not C++.

 |> yeah, I do.  I work on thinkpad x220 sized machines which are just \
 |> big enough
 |> for two 80 column windows with a little left over.  When I'm checking \
 |> in code,
 |> reviewing code, debugging code, I frequently want to see two versions \
 |> of the
 |> same file side by side.  If you code wider than 80 columns it greatly \
 |> reduces
 |> the speed at which you can figure out what happened.

I missed the possibility in screen(1), now in tmux(1) i can use

  bind-key -T prefix       <      set-window-option force-width 80
  bind-key -T prefix       >      set-window-option force-width 0

again.

 |The thing that sort of vexes me about these arguments is that the
 |number 80 is so arbitrary. If you can fit two 80 column windows
 |side-by-side, then surely you could do the same with two 78-, 72- or
 |even 64-column windows. So why not 64, 72 or 78 columns?

Whatever you say, i only wanted to add that "Human attention" is
only so far stretchable, and that readers likely cannot grasp line
lengths of that size, especially if densely packed or the
surrounding lines are of significantly different length.  Some
neurologist could surely correct me.
With tab indentation, a function with one level of conditionals
eats up 16 rows, so the more or less ideal line length of 64 (if
i recall correctly Knuth advocated 66) is the result.

--steffen
|
|Der Kragenbaer,                The moon bear,
|der holt sich munter           he cheerfully and one by one
|einen nach dem anderen runter  wa.ks himself off
|(By Robert Gernhardt)