Re: PATCH, RFC: 2.6 Documentation/Codingstyle

[Andries Brouwer <aebr@win.tue.nl>]

On Fri, Feb 13, 2004 at 09:58:02AM +0100, Giuliano Pochini wrote:

>> +The limit on the length of lines is 80 columns and this is a hard limit.
> 
> Well, I think this requirement is a bit silly IMHO. How many of us
> do usually code in a 80x25 terminal screen nowadays ?

I do. (That is, 80xN with N in 24..60 or so.)

The 80 here has a pedagogical and a practical purpose.
The practical one is that it makes sure that everybody can read the source.
The pedagogical is to invite you to arrange the code in a different way
if you are nesting too deeply or your expressions are too complicated.

There is also ergonomics. There is a reason newspapers do not print
text across the full width of the page - it would be very difficult
to read. There is an optimal column width. One might fight over the
exact value of the optimum, but 80 columns is not a bad choice.

Andries