On Mon, Apr 5, 2010 at 4:42 PM, Ted Roche <tedro...@tedroche.com> wrote: >> I was thinking the other day about that. I was wondering if/when >> the community-at-large reach a point where something wider than 80 >> columns becomes the standard. And if so, what will it be, or what >> will define it? > > It's difficult for the human eye to track across a long line of text and > successfully execute a carriage-return-line-feed eyeball sequence > without losing track of the line they're on.
Just to be clear, I didn't mean to suggest that ridiculously wide lines is a good idea in general. But I think it's reasonable to suppose it may be appropriate in some cases. For example, in source code, with your indent level defined to be eight spaces, even a few levels of indentation can eat up a sizable chunk of horizontal space. If you're of the style school that says functions should be indented, suppose an if clause inside a loop, and you're already 24 characters in (30%). Now, if you find yourself indented several levels in, there's a good chance you really should be moving that code to a subroutine, but combine a few levels of indent with some other constructs (like a long literal string), and maybe 80 columns doesn't make as much sense. (Or maybe it does; hypothetical situations are tough to analyze. :) ) > The "VGA" options all list 80 columns by some number of lines, > so is the VGA "standard" [1] locked to 80 columns? ... > ... a DOS-based database application ... mode of 132x43 ... The venerable Lotus 1-2-3 also made use of that mode. I think your placing of "standard" in quotes pretty much explains it all. 132x43 and other wide modes where something I used to frequently see in "vga=ask". More recently, it seems like 80 columns is the limit. I don't know if that's because the wide modes were standardized out of existence, or if mfgs just don't bother implementing them anymore because nobody uses text modes these days, or what. But any which way you slice it, the "standard" text modes aren't very standard, beyond 80x25. Sometimes a standard will win out just because it exists and it's as good a choice as anything. If it turns out 80 columns is close to the useful limit for humans anyway, I doubt we'd see a new standard replace it, even if (e.g.) 90 is closer to the "biological ideal". In that vein: WRT short text messages (SMS, microblogging, etc.), is there any reason to suppose 140 characters shouldn't remain the limit forever, even if the technology changes to allow more? Maybe 30 years from now, "140 characters" will have a historical footnote mentioning the original SMS implementation, much like we footnote "80 columns" with a mention of IBM punched cards. -- Ben _______________________________________________ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
