On 1/7/14 12:16, Martin Thomson wrote:
On 2014-01-06, at 19:28, Patrick McManus <mcma...@ducksong.com> wrote:

I strongly prefer at least a 100 character per line limit. Technology
marches on.
Yes.  I’ve encountered too many instances where 80 was not enough.

Since people are introducing actual research information here, let's run some numbers. According to Paterson et. al. [1], reading comprehension speed is actively hindered by lines that are either too short or too long, which they define as 9 picas (1.5 inches) and 43 picas (~7 inches), respectively. Comprehension is significantly faster at 19 picas (~3 inches).

Using the default themes that ship with the OS X "Terminal" app, an 80-character-wide terminal is on the order of 4 inches wide on a 15-inch monitor. 100 columns pushes this to nearly 5 inches.

Now, I'm not arguing for a 60-character line length here. However, it would seem that moving from 80 to 100 is going in the wrong direction for comprehension speed.

____
[1] http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/xge/27/5/572/
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