Re: [PATCH] SubmittingPatches: Increase the line length limit from 80 to 100 colums

[hpanvin@xxxxxxxxx]

96 might be a better limit.  Why?  Because 80 and 96 are the easiest line lengths to achieve on a printer.  80 is typically the default, but with a 12 cpi font you get 96.

Tejun Heo <tj@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>Hello,
>
>On Fri, Feb 03, 2012 at 11:07:43AM +0100, Ingo Molnar wrote:
>> 
>> * Ingo Molnar <mingo@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>> 
>> > > If we want to increase the standard to (say) 96 cols then 
>> > > fine, I'd be happy with that.  But until we do that we 
>> > > should not create such a gruesome mess for those who use 80 
>> > > cols.
>> > 
>> > The kernel has *already* become a gruesome mess for 80 col 
>> > users long ago. That was the main reason why I stopped using 
>> > 80 col terminals two years ago ...
>> > 
>> > So lets stop the pretense.
>
>I don't know.  In my experience, a lot of code, especially core part,
>mostly follows 80 col limit.  It shouldn't be too difficult to write
>up a script to count >80col lines in different parts of the kernel.
>
>> [PATCH] SubmittingPatches: Increase the line length limit from 80 to
>100 colums
>> 
>> The overwhelming majority of kernel developers have stopped 
>> using 80 col terminals years ago.
>> 
>> As far as I'm aware I was the last regular kernel contributor 
>> who still used a standard VGA text console, but both text 
>> consoles and using them to read the kernel source code has 
>> become increasingly gruesome years ago so I switched to a wider 
>> terminal two years ago.
>
>People usually place multiple windows horizontally so it's not like
>all those extra pixels go wasted.  80col might even have the benefit
>of giving overall higher density in terms of pixel usage.
>
>> Worse than that, people are actively uglifying the kernel code 
>> to fit things into 80 cols mechanically. They are using 
>> checkpatch and are interpreting the 80 col warnings the wrong 
>> way again and again, sucking up reviewer bandwidth that could be 
>> utilized better.
>> 
>> So lets increase the limit to 100 cols - this is a nice round 
>> limit, and it also happens to match with most developer xterm 
>> sizes. Code that goes over 100 cols for no good reasons will be 
>> arguably something worth fixing. (100 cols is also arguably 
>> closer to various brain limits such as vision of field and 
>> resolution restrictions, so we'll likely not have to increase 
>> this limit for a couple of million years, for all retro human 
>> genome users.)
>
>That said, yeah, 80col is a pain in the ass and lessening the pressure
>a bit might make it a non-problem and 100 is one of the nicer numbers
>which aren't power of two.
>
>For me, the biggest reason to stick to 80col has been that, while
>being widely disliked, it still was the most common limit people were
>using and consistency tends to be more beneficial on these issues.  If
>we're gonna do this, and I hope we do, let's proactively encourage /
>enforce it - ie. let's collectively nag so that 100col quickly becomes
>the standard.
>
>Acked-by: Tejun Heo <tj@xxxxxxxxxx>
>
>Thanks.
>
>-- 
>tejun

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