Benjamin Scott <dragonh...@gmail.com> writes: > > On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 8:34 PM, Ric Werme <ewe...@comcast.net> wrote: > > ... I find myself sticking to emacs and its "fill paragraph" > > function and 80 column lines. It's amazing how much influence IBM cards > > still have on me and other right-thinking individuals. > > I was thinking the other day about that. I was wondering if/when > the community-at-large reach a point where something wider than 80 > columns becomes the standard. And if so, what will it be, or what > will define it? [...] > Why does this matter? It's commonly claimed that human > understanding significantly increases when the information is fit in > to the field-of-view at one time. That has been my experience, both > personally, and with others. As one CS instructor put it > (paraphrase), "Yes, this means you'll be a better programmer if you > get a bigger monitor." So if "everyone" has a wide screen, but > "nobody" uses it, there's actually reason to suspect that might be > decreasing code quality.
Well, there's an alternative to wide-screen monitors allowing for wider windows: wide-screen monitors allowing for *more numerous* 80-column windows. :) Maybe it's analogous to the way that newspaper-texts are laid-out in side-by-side columns. The bit about `more information fitting into the field of view at once' is interesting, because `the field of view' isn't necessarily as wide as people think it is: small text, for example is basically unreadable outside of the foveal region; effective use of more peripheral vision, then, involves using it to track *different* (more gross) types of information from what the fovea handles. Consider the implications of that, and it seems that maybe I'm actually not joking with the "*more numerous* 80-column windows" comment, above. -- "Don't be afraid to ask (λf.((λx.xx) (λr.f(rr))))." _______________________________________________ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
