August <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>> The problem is not "standard terminals" but legibility.
>
> I'm sure that legibility was one of the motivations for the decision to
> use 80 character columns for terminals. The standard width sure is an
> issue here as wrongly formatted paragraphs affect legibility even more
> than overly long lines. The default width for editors and terminal
> windows is usually 80 characters.

Yeah, and I strongly dislike the occasional suggestion you see to "just
make your windows wider, c'mon it's a modern system!" (hi Tom!).

My display is perfectly _capable_ of holding very wide windows, but *I
don't want such windows*!!!

My reasoning is this:  _most_ code or line-wrapped text doesn't have
long lines (for good legibility reasons), so if I make my windows very
wide by default, I'm simply going to have a lot of empty space in them
most of the time; by keeping my windows to a reasonable width, I can in
fact fit two windows side-by-side on my display, allowing me to use the
available space more productively.

-Miles
-- 
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(^.^)
(")")
*This is the cute kitty virus, please copy this into your sig so it can spread.


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