Re: Changing line widths in the Emacs source code

[Óscar Fuentes]

Göktuğ Kayaalp <self@gkayaalp.com> writes:

> On 2020-09-13 21:38 +03, Vladimir Sedach <vas@oneofus.la> wrote:
>> Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> writes:
>> The optimum line length for legibility has been found to be 55-60
>> characters over hundreds of years of book publishing experience. 90
>> characters per line is considered the absolute maximum, and you
>> rarely see it. "Today's wide screens" is as bad of a reason for
>> increasing line length in text files as "today's wide paper" would be
>> an excuse to increase line length in books.
>
> Not to refute any other points here, but this is an oft-mentioned
> factoid, yet code is not prose, so how relevant this is is questionable.
> Most importantly, a decent chunk of an average line is indentation:

Keeping track of indentation level adds to cognitive load, so we can't
dismiss leading unused columns as irrelevant.