On 27 Oct 2005, at 16:27, Ralf Angeli wrote:
- I've been doing some work in Python lately. Python enforces strict
formatting, and you don't have the option of inserting a newline at
almost arbitrary (whitespace) positions like in C, for example.
Of course there is such an option. Just put a backslash in front of
the linebreak. See
<URL:http://www.python.org/doc/2.4.2/ref/explicit-joining.html>.
Sure, but that involves me assuming a fixed line length (that's where
I insert the line break, including the backslash).
The next time I open the file in a frame with a different (smaller)
width, things get messy again.
(I said "inserting a newline at whitespace positions like in C" for a
reason. Python requires the backslash, many other languages don't
because they treat newlines as whitespace.)
- LaTeX. Sometimes I edit my document with a narrow frame, sometimes
with a larger one. Screen real-estate is limited, and I often like
to have several things open to copy/paste etc. Therefore, I'd like
text to be rewrapped to use up the screen.
Personally I think the longer text lines become the more readability
decreases. So for me a 70-something character limit is desirable even
in a wide frame.
Fair enough, that's your choice. And I wouldn't use very wide frames,
for that reason. But I use narrow ones.
People who use window managers with several windows concurrently on
the screen will probably more appreciate the problem at hand than
someone who uses Emacs in TTY, or within a basic window manager with
several desktop to switch between. I have a feeling that most people
in the development community use the latter (desktop switching comes
off the shelf on KDE, I think, and I've seen several GNU/Linux-to-Mac-
switchers install a switchable-desktop extension first thing).
Anyway, keep in mind that the buffer size of TeX is limited. And that
means the maximal line length which can be processed is limited as
well. Depending on the value of the limit this can make problems if
you save your LaTeX files with long lines.
This limit should be fairly high. TeXShop uses (visual) soft wrapping
and this app has tons of regular users. Apart from that, I guess it
should be up to the mode to enforce limits to line lengths if the
syntax / processors require that.
Again, if someone wants to work like that, fine: they will insert
hard newlines and keep them in their files, and the line length will
be 65 max or whatever, and they will probably keep their frames with
a constant width.
But the alternative, and that's much more practical for users of
variable-width frames, is to save the file in a format that's needed
for the processor (i.e. certain hard-newlines for Python, and no or
arbitrary newlines within paragraphs in LaTeX), but edit using the
full width of the current frame. longlines already helps a lot, but
has the practical issues others and I have pointed out.
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