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There is a very good technical argument for NOT using "semantic" line breaks when editing markup source code, especially of the "hardwrap" variety, and that is
by tpoacher 1y ago
There is a very good technical argument for NOT using "semantic" line breaks when editing markup source code, especially of the "hardwrap" variety, and that is the ability to easily diff two versions of the same document, e.g. when comparing latex git commits.
Anything that reorganises the sentence around for the sake of maintaining justification, completely destroys any meaningful diff from taking place.
And ideally your editor should support both hard and soft wrapping, so that aesthetics of wrapping shouldn't be a big issue.
And I say this as a fan of hardwrapping text.
- chrismorgan 1y agoI think you’ve got things back to front. Semantic line breaks improves diffing.
- tpoacher 1y agoonly if the individual lines aren't shifted about / re-justified, and it's only a matter of adding a new line in between existing lines. But with prose (like latex) this is rarely the case. A single word might rejustify the whole paragraph. So suddenly instead of diff showing you a single word change, it flags the whole paragraph.