On Tue, May 22, 2018 at 06:35:17AM +0300, li...@wrant.com wrote: > For younger UNIX users, the real reason is technical limits of hardware then. > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punched_card#IBM_80-column_punched_card_format_and_character_codes > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Characters_per_line#History > > People tend to forget quickly historic evolution is the only reason there is.
The actual "readability limit" is around 60 signs for variable-width fonts, that's what you use in typography, conventionally, to decide whether you want two columns text or one column. Longer than that, it becomes for your eyes to reset to the correct start of line. I suspect that somewhat larger text on screen with fixed width fonts has a somewhat bigger threshold, nobody knows exactly which, the cursor probably helps a bit. 80 looks like a good compromise.
