From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S266981AbUBMMmO (ORCPT ); Fri, 13 Feb 2004 07:42:14 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S266982AbUBMMmO (ORCPT ); Fri, 13 Feb 2004 07:42:14 -0500 Received: from mail.aei.ca ([206.123.6.14]:44756 "EHLO aeimail.aei.ca") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S266981AbUBMMmL (ORCPT ); Fri, 13 Feb 2004 07:42:11 -0500 From: Ed Tomlinson Organization: me To: linux kernel Subject: Re: PATCH, RFC: 2.6 Documentation/Codingstyle Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2004 07:42:08 -0500 User-Agent: KMail/1.5.93 Cc: Andries Brouwer References: <200402130615.10608.mhf@linuxmail.org> <20040213124232.B2871@pclin040.win.tue.nl> In-Reply-To: <20040213124232.B2871@pclin040.win.tue.nl> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: <200402130742.08853.edt@aei.ca> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On February 13, 2004 06:42 am, Andries Brouwer wrote: > 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. This would be true if not for indenting. A program is not a newspaper. I doubt the lenght of text, excluding the indent is longer than 80 chars very often.... With 80 columns and indenting code looks ugly. Ed Tomlinson