Re: PATCH, RFC: 2.6 Documentation/Codingstyle

[Michael Frank <mhf@linuxmail.org>]

On Friday 13 February 2004 17:10, Andrew Morton wrote:
> Giuliano Pochini <pochini@shiny.it> wrote:
> >
> > 
> > On 12-Feb-2004 Michael Frank wrote:
> > > Here is Codingstyle updated.
> > 
> > > +The limit on the length of lines is 80 columns and this is a hard limit.

Sorry, I "shortened" that line away and will add it again.

> > 
> > Well, I think this requirement is a bit silly IMHO. How many of us
> > do usually code in a 80x25 terminal screen nowadays ?

I still use 80 wide but with many more lines. I tend to be sloppy about 
code extending beyond 80, which I shall change ;)

Also bear in mind that the fundamental arguments for 80 columns are not 
related to (display) hardware capabilities, but related to clarity of code.

> > 
> 
> "I think the 90x25 requirement is silly"
> 
> "I think the 100x25 requirement is silly"
> 

> And so it goes.  You get into an xterm arms race wherein everyone has to
> make their terminal as wide as the widest guy so anyone can get any work
> done.
> 
> Yes, 80 cols sucks and the world would be a better place had CodingStyle
> mandated 96 columns five years ago.  But it didn't happen.
> 

As to "five years ago", what about review the coding style situation before 
starting 2.7:

In view of better hardware, increasing linelength a little to 96 could be 
considered without increasing the number of indentation levels.

Perhaps consider deprecating function-like macros as inline technology
is much improved.

...