Re: Line length for code?

[Oliver Heimlich]

On 23.01.2016 23:19, Rik wrote:
> 1/23/16
> 
> jwe,
> 
> In changeset 21133:31674b9d202b, "NEWS: Refill text to 72 columns", a
> documentation file was wrapped to 72 rather than 80 characters.  In
> appendix C of the manual on "Tips and Standards" we have "Format the
> documentation string so that it fits within an 80-column screen."  I don't
> think we need to worry about people using terminals that only display 75
> characters anymore.  Even 80 characters is not really an issue anymore.
> 
> At any rate, I've had my editor set to wrap code lines at 80 characters for
> years now so there is a lot of the code base that is wrapped to that length
> rather than 72.
> 
> --Rik

>From Wikipedia, s.v., “Characters per line”:
        Many plain text documents still conform to 72 characters per line (CPL)
out of tradition. RFC 2046, which defines the text/plain MIME type, is
itself a 72 CPL plain text.

Then, the default column width in makeinfo is 72. Any documentation
string in Octave gets rewrapped to 72 characters anyway when you call
“help function”. Calling “news” is an exception to this, because the
NEWS file in 4.0.0 is 80 characters wide and has been formatted manually
in the text file.

The NEWS file of the interval package has been formatted by Texinfo, so
“news interval” shows a 72 columns text. IMHO, having a fixed CPL limit
in times of big screens, proportional fonts, auto-wrapping text editors
and post-processors like Texinfo is deprecated. Also it is much easier
to work with version control if you use techniques like this:
http://rhodesmill.org/brandon/2012/one-sentence-per-line/

Oliver