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In code, enforcing a max character count per line is debatable and has some merit. In prose (i.e. documentation written in Markdown), I'd say that enforcing a

In code, enforcing a max character count per line is debatable and has some merit. In prose (i.e. documentation written in Markdown), I'd say that enforcing a max count is definitely counterproductive. Prose is meant to start a new line whenever it's needed. What you write in Markdown is not necessarily how it'll get formatted on a web page (i.e. even if your input is capped at 80 characters per line, the output might not necessarily be capped at 80 characters per line) since display fonts typically aren't monospaced. Consequently, the text in one line in your .md file will not necessarily show up as one line in the webpage (in fact, it probably won't).

ncmncm 8y ago
Can you explain how any of the above connects to anything else? If the markdown text will be reformatted for display, you get no benefit from writing it in a wider format than allows more than one source document to be on the display at once. You seem to be saying that when writing markdown you have no need to refer to anything else?
- rhn_mk1 8y ago
  > you get no benefit from writing it in a wider format Putting unlimited characters on a line is not merely a "wider format". It's a way of saying "format it as wide as you like", therefore the benefit is not in having a wider format, but one that simultaneously wider and narrower, depending on what's needed. To help visualize the benefit, abolishing line length in prose prevents lines from breaking in unexpected places, when the user's display is narrower than the preformatted text line. I find it extremely jarring. With almost every editor today being able to word wrap, this stops being a problem. While line lengths may be significant for code, where limiting "sentence length" may be useful, prose is an entirely different thing to read.
paulrpotts 8y ago
When I write in Markdown, I generally just turn on soft wrapping in my text editor and just make each paragraph one line. Editing plain text using my favorite font, Bistream Vera Sans Mono 12, on a 1920x1080 display, lines break about the 150th column. That width seems to work reasonably well for me when writing blog posts.

ncmncm 8y ago

Can you explain how any of the above connects to anything else? If the markdown text will be reformatted for display, you get no benefit from writing it in a wider format than allows more than one source document to be on the display at once. You seem to be saying that when writing markdown you have no need to refer to anything else?

rhn_mk1 8y ago
> you get no benefit from writing it in a wider format Putting unlimited characters on a line is not merely a "wider format". It's a way of saying "format it as wide as you like", therefore the benefit is not in having a wider format, but one that simultaneously wider and narrower, depending on what's needed. To help visualize the benefit, abolishing line length in prose prevents lines from breaking in unexpected places, when the user's display is narrower than the preformatted text line. I find it extremely jarring. With almost every editor today being able to word wrap, this stops being a problem. While line lengths may be significant for code, where limiting "sentence length" may be useful, prose is an entirely different thing to read.

paulrpotts 8y ago

When I write in Markdown, I generally just turn on soft wrapping in my text editor and just make each paragraph one line. Editing plain text using my favorite font, Bistream Vera Sans Mono 12, on a 1920x1080 display, lines break about the 150th column. That width seems to work reasonably well for me when writing blog posts.