[RFC] Characters per line: from punch card (80) to line printer (132)

[Robin Curtis]

My IBM Selectric golfball electronic printer only does 90 characters on A4 in portrait mode………(at 10 cps) 

(as for my all electric TELEX Teleprinter machine !) 

Is this debate for real ?!  - or is this a Christmas spoof ? 

External observer…..keep up the great work. :)

(while I punch out a few more 80 column cards). 



> On 5 Dec 2019, at 17:55, Andrew Stubbs <ams@codesourcery.com> wrote:
> 
> On 05/12/2019 16:17, Joseph Myers wrote:
>> Longer lines mean less space for multiple terminal / editor windows
>> side-by-side to look at different pieces of code.  I don't think that's an
>> improvement.
> 
> Here's a data-point ....
> 
> My 1920 pixel-wide screen, in the default font, allows 239 columns; not enough for two 130-wide editors.  Especially not with line numbers and "gutter" columns.
> 
> On the other hand, 80 columns does tend to cause some formatting contortions, with long function names and deeper indentations.
> 
> I think a nice round 100 would be a good compromise.
> 
> Andrew