4 ms·

If the line of code has many narrow characters (like i, l, t, f, parens, comma, and dot) and few wide characters (like uppercase or Chinese characters in your i

by vorg 12y ago

If the line of code has many narrow characters (like i, l, t, f, parens, comma, and dot) and few wide characters (like uppercase or Chinese characters in your identifiers) then you can have much more than 80 characters on a line IMO. Or were you advocating breaking the 80 chars per line restriction, but not the fixed-width font restriction?

vidarh 12y ago
I'd be much more comfortable with breaking the 80 chars per line restriction than using variable width fonts - often it helps readability to be able to easily line things up. The day every system I work on consistently handles tab-stops in a sensible way, I might be open to consider variable width fonts for coding.
golergka 12y ago
Viewing code with a variable width font is considered madness by default, no?
- jff 12y ago
  Only if you put too much value on every little thing lining up. Your indentation levels will still work out, and beyond that people have better things to do than futz around lining up all their comments perfectly...
- MaysonL 12y ago
  Oberon used it by default, and it makes long, multi-statement lines much more readable. Having more statements on the screen at once allows for more readability.
- smorrow 12y ago
  You've probably seen some code in a variable-width font at some point in your life, and just never were conscious of it because it looked so right. It's alot like syntax highlighting: people will lose their minds if you suggest that it's even possible to live without it, but the fact that they are able to read their shell input line, their less/vim :-line, their google input line when they use quotes/minus/etc, their books with code in them, ..., suggests that their complaint is not based on a _need_ for highlighting but on an expectation for it. It's the only way to explain why it's apparently necessary in one program and completely unneeded in all others. Fixed-width fonts are like that.

by vorg 12y ago

vidarh 12y ago

I'd be much more comfortable with breaking the 80 chars per line restriction than using variable width fonts - often it helps readability to be able to easily line things up. The day every system I work on consistently handles tab-stops in a sensible way, I might be open to consider variable width fonts for coding.

golergka 12y ago

Viewing code with a variable width font is considered madness by default, no?

jff 12y ago
Only if you put too much value on every little thing lining up. Your indentation levels will still work out, and beyond that people have better things to do than futz around lining up all their comments perfectly...
MaysonL 12y ago
Oberon used it by default, and it makes long, multi-statement lines much more readable. Having more statements on the screen at once allows for more readability.
smorrow 12y ago
You've probably seen some code in a variable-width font at some point in your life, and just never were conscious of it because it looked so right. It's alot like syntax highlighting: people will lose their minds if you suggest that it's even possible to live without it, but the fact that they are able to read their shell input line, their less/vim :-line, their google input line when they use quotes/minus/etc, their books with code in them, ..., suggests that their complaint is not based on a _need_ for highlighting but on an expectation for it. It's the only way to explain why it's apparently necessary in one program and completely unneeded in all others. Fixed-width fonts are like that.