Re: rough first impressions

On Mon, Apr 14, 2003 at 10:27:46PM -0400, Raffael Cavallaro wrote:
> A good rule of thumb in this industry is to design for increasing 
> capacity of resources, including screen real estate, not the 80 column 
> glass ttys of a quarter century ago.

Screen real estate is not the only, or for that part the most
important, reason to limit line length. Rather, you have to think about
ergonomy here. Long lines are harder for the eyes and the brain to
follow. The old typographical rule of thumb that a line should have no
more than 60-70 characters is not only applicable to ordinary text, but
to source code as well. If the lines are longer, you have to make a
(subconscious) mental effort to follow them, which is distracting and
in the long run very tiring.

Regards

Jonas Öster

-- 
typedef enum { false, true, wow } bool;     - Donald E. Knuth