> In that gauge I would exclude indentation (you don't count the > number of characters the margin takes) ....
I don't think anyone reads the margins. :-) That said, I agree that code and prose are fundamentally different beasts. Still, when reading either and you get to the end of the line, you need to shift your gaze down a line and back to the left margin (or the left margin plus any indentation). That task becomes more difficult as line length increases. As programmers/software engineers, we need to read and write both code and text. I think 80 columns is still a decent compromise. Skip -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
