From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: lm@mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy) Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2017 12:59:20 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] 80 columns ... In-Reply-To: References: <7wpo8rud7y.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> <60C45CFF-0B5C-4DAB-8936-BA27ECFFA487@gmail.com> <025501d3598f$008f19d0$01ad4d70$@ronnatalie.com> <201711101905.vAAJ5SpV031420@darkstar.fourwinds.com> <47fee362-0fde-69ff-7794-a88cf3069030@telegraphics.com.au> <20171110203923.GA29606@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: <20171110205920.GC29606@mcvoy.com> On Fri, Nov 10, 2017 at 01:46:30PM -0700, Warner Losh wrote: > On Fri, Nov 10, 2017 at 1:39 PM, Larry McVoy wrote: > > > > > Separate from this, I think that the whole 80 column thing is a bit > > silly. > > > > I have used 132 as by default for a long time now. > > > > > > Just don't move on without some limit. There are real > > > cognitive/typographic reasons why excessively long lines hurt > > > comprehension. This is why both 500 year old books and 5 month old books > > > have narrow measures. > > > > I've made that point and people blithely ignore it. > > > > When I was debating style wars in the 90's, we adopted a 'wide is OK' > approach, but with a soft limit of ~130 and a hard limit of 160 in > exceptional cases. There was some research that showed that there's a > limited field of view you want to be able to look at the code without > moving your eyes side to side, just up and down. With the technology of the > time, above about 130 would be hard to read 'at a glance'. Years later, I > went looking for those studies, and couldn't find them and the original > advocate of the view couldn't provide them. > > I'm the first to admit that 80 is too few. But 200 is definitely too wide > and 100-120 seems to still be the sweet spot for my eyes and the range of > hardware that I use. I could live with 100.