Re: Changing line widths in the Emacs source code

[Stefan Monnier]

>> Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> writes:
>> The optimum line length for legibility has been found to be 55-60
>> characters over hundreds of years of book publishing experience. 90
>> characters per line is considered the absolute maximum, and you
>> rarely see it. "Today's wide screens" is as bad of a reason for
>> increasing line length in text files as "today's wide paper" would be
>> an excuse to increase line length in books.
> Not to refute any other points here, but this is an oft-mentioned
> factoid, yet code is not prose, so how relevant this is is questionable.

Indeed.  The 55-60 is for columns of actual text.
That leaves up to 25 columns of indentation in an 80-columns window.

> => "On average 7.957429 spaces worth of indentation per line (21235 lines)"
> So assuming 80-char lines, on average 1/10 of a line is leading
> whitespace.

So, ~8 columns of indentation, which leaves ~72 columns of actual text.
Since most lines don't extend all the way to the 80th column, that means
most lines stick within the 55-60 optimum.


        Stefan