From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: toby@telegraphics.com.au (Toby Thain) Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2017 17:46:16 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] 80 columns ... In-Reply-To: <201711102043.vAAKhaYB020128@darkstar.fourwinds.com> 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> <201711102043.vAAKhaYB020128@darkstar.fourwinds.com> Message-ID: On 2017-11-10 3:43 PM, Jon Steinhart wrote: > Toby Thain writes: >> 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. >> >> 80 might be too narrow for most, but at some point beyond 132 is "too >> far". :) > > Well, I would claim that books have technological limitations that are > different than computer monitors. It's a matter of doing what's appropriate > instead of taking a dogmatic approach. It's _reading_. Code doesn't magically escape typographic factors. The human visual/processing system is the constraint, it does not care whether you're reading paper or the more hostile LCD - and it has not changed materially in the millennia we've been doing writing (and certainly not the 500 years we've been doing books). There is also a body of modern research on this. Even research specifically focused on code, I believe. > > I will point out that while it's sometimes a pain, the reader/writer ratio > is a major driving force. I save on typing and use very terse code when > writing stuff for myself. But, when writing stuff where there are many > readers I feel that it's my job to put in the extra work to make it more > accessible to the reader, partly because I don't want the readers bugging me. > > Jon >