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Re: 80 char line limit, and we should stop the convention


From: Barry Margolin
Subject: Re: 80 char line limit, and we should stop the convention
Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2012 19:33:49 -0000
User-agent: MT-NewsWatcher/3.5.3b3 (Intel Mac OS X)

In article <jiga9f$e0d$1@newscl01ah.mathworks.com>,
 Peter Davis <pfd@pfdstudio.com> wrote:

> When I started at DEC, I remember the VT100 (and possibly the VT52) 
> terminals had a "wide" mode, which simply used a narrower font to get 
> 132 characters on the screen.  I got in the habit of using 132 as my 
> line width limit.
> 
> Of course, that was before emacs had margin bars, etc.

That was also the days of those huge line printers, which typically had 
132 character lines.  The VT100 mode was presumably added so you could 
preview printed reports.

It's been a while, so I don't remember in detail, but I can't imagine 
that the tiny font was very readable.

-- 
Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***


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