From owner-freebsd-hackers Fri Feb 28 7:41:52 2003 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 323AF37B40C for ; Fri, 28 Feb 2003 07:41:49 -0800 (PST) Received: from heron.mail.pas.earthlink.net (heron.mail.pas.earthlink.net [207.217.120.189]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2000043FBF for ; Fri, 28 Feb 2003 07:41:48 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from tlambert2@mindspring.com) Received: from pool0037.cvx21-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net ([209.179.192.37] helo=mindspring.com) by heron.mail.pas.earthlink.net with asmtp (SSLv3:RC4-MD5:128) (Exim 3.33 #1) id 18omdc-0006ja-00; Fri, 28 Feb 2003 07:41:29 -0800 Message-ID: <3E5F82CF.FCE0CB4C@mindspring.com> Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2003 07:39:59 -0800 From: Terry Lambert X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.79 [en] (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: David Cuthbert Cc: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: C coding editor References: <20030221122103.GA2073@asterix.local> <3E5A4264.2010801@millions.ca> <3E5A4BA9.5010700@mitre.org> <200302260841.40693.wes@softweyr.com> <3E5EF568.4040800@kanga.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-ELNK-Trace: b1a02af9316fbb217a47c185c03b154d40683398e744b8a49f8b65d86675531aa719d1617103ab5f387f7b89c61deb1d350badd9bab72f9c350badd9bab72f9c Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG David Cuthbert wrote: > Wes Peters wrote: > > Seriously, limiting your programming for a lifetime to 80 columns > > because you couldn't figure out how to make some grotty old dot > > matrix printer do 8-point printing a decade ago really isn't all > > that smart, is it? > > No, but I still find 80 columns to be a reasonable limit. The average > person can comfortably track up to about 65 characters on a line in > prose (or so I've been told from a study that was related to me from a > forgotten source...). Given that there's more whitespace in code, it's > probably a bit more. Average English word length is 5 characters; with a space, that's 6 characters. 65 characters is therefore 11 words. The Bell Labs study which set telephone number length limits at 7 digits found that the average person could keep between 5 and 9 items in memory at a time. I guess "11 words" isn't out of the question, but it's a bit long. 8-) 8-). However... that does mean that something with a shorter average length is going to limit the desirable maximum line length even further, if your purpose is "better human comprehension". > The 80 column limit can also encourage developers to keep their > functions smaller and factor out common code. (I say can, because I've > seen the six-levels-of-indentation-loops sadly all too often...) Seems to have worked well for tcp_input(). 8-) 8-). > > I'm still disappointed at programming editors that can't make sense > > of normal typefaces and have to be used with monospaced fonts. > > I've tried it, mainly to see what it looks like. Unfortunately, the > delimiters that have a great deal of meaning in many languages (parens, > braces, brackets, single quotes, etc.) end up being far too small for my > eyes. > > For some reason, though, I've seen a lot of VHDL code typeset in books > in proportional fonts, though usually with boldface highlighting of > reserved words. Proportional fonts are much slower reading than non-proportional; it is also harder to get the clock marks in the paper tape, punch cards, and printer spacing charts to line up correctly. 8^p. -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message