Subject: Re: Bird #5

From: [email-masked] (Randy Harr)
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 93 15:00:42 PST

Should we be so quick to dismiss 80 column limitations or encouraged
styles.  Most "default" window sizes still come up as 80 characters; most
screen fonts are still mono-spaced and support this paradigm.  Printing of
unformatted text files always still defaults to 10 pt mono-spaced fonts
(even on many postscript systems) and only allow 72-80 characters across per
page.  Although the source of the size (80 characters) actually pre-dates
even punched cards, it is still prevalent IF you desire human-readable and
easily processable "documentation".

The real question seems to be whether we desire human readable files.  We can
change it to a style issue only if we remove the "newline" (carriage return
or whatever; depending on the file system) as an active part of the syntax.

randy

> From [email-masked] Thu Dec  9 13:14:27 1993
> To: [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: Bird #5
> 
> Howdy,
> 
> As far as I'm concerned there is no reason to confine a line
> to 80 characters. That's an ancient restriction born of
> punched-cards that I think we can safely ignore.
> 
> Chris
> 
>