Michael Hunter <Michael.Hunter at Sun.COM> wrote:
> The wetware between our ears hasn't changed much thought and thats the
> processing unit that needs to grok this stuff. Sure, the tools can
> suck up as much white space as important but the next guy who needs to
> maintain the code sure wouldn't mind if it was basically consistent and
> easy to read. One part of being easy to read is seeing it as a graphic
> object (having control flow stand out). Rightward creep tends to make
> that too busy for our brain to pick up easily. 80 columns is arbitrary
> but I've rarely found a place where I wanted to go beyond 80 columns
> that didn't lend itself to something easier to read within 80 columns.
Fir this reason (and for the other below), I write almost 80 column software but
I changed cstyle 3 years ago to allow 132 chars in order to prevent too
many warnings (or. /* CSTYLED */ comments) in my code.
If you like to be portable you cannot avoid long likes with strings in them.
***---->
If you write siftware that _usually_ needs more than 80 columns, you did not
structure your code well enough. This is a frequent problem in official FSF
software that even indents by 2-4 spaces instead of tabs.
J?rg
--
EMail:joerg at schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) J?rg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
js at cs.tu-berlin.de (uni)
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