Re: scotty-2.1.0 make on OSF3.2D rev41

Greg A. Woods (woods@most.weird.com)
Tue, 25 Jun 96 09:13:44 -0400 (EDT)

[ On Tue, June 25, 1996 at 09:24:42 (+0100), R. Whittington wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: scotty-2.1.0 make on OSF3.2D rev41
>
> you don't value the aesthetic then? (it puts it over 80 chars) :-)

Which is better, some concept of what looks pretty, or something that
works? ;-)

doggerel follows:

I have *never* worried about lines less than 132 chars. For programming
I've always used either terminals that can show more than 80 chars wide
(which my two old vt102's are quite happy to do), or an xterm window
that's at least 100 chars wide (and as many lines as I can possibly
get).

Code readability is *most* important to me, and I find continuation
lines very difficult to read, esp. when I can't widen my window (or
narrow my font) and make them go away. I like the fact that emacs
automatically wraps lines with a backslash at the end, but I don't like
fixed lines.

BTW, I pick 132 chars because that's the traditional maximum width of a
wide-carriage printer, though I don't know when I last printed anything
out, never mind on something like the decwriter-III sitting at the end
of my desk! ;-)

I never use newlines in the middle of expressions unless I absolutely
must, and if I split macro assignments in makefiles I do so with one
element per line, not to some maximum right margin.

I also insist on 8-character ASCII tab indendation units, but that's
another story. ;-)

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

+1 416 443-1734 VE3TCP robohack!woods Planix, Inc. <woods@planix.com>; Secrets of the Weird <woods@weird.com>