Re: Code Width and Comment Style (Was: What counts as a fork?)

Subject: Re: Code Width and Comment Style (Was: What counts as a fork?)
From: Conrad Cunningham &lt;hcc.olemiss@ ... &gt;
Date: Fri, 1 Dec 2017 13:00:17 -0600

I likewise learned to program in the punch-card days (in the mid-1970s though).

I also stay under 80 columns for my code today because that is about the maximum width I get on my laser printer if I just do an "lpr" of a text file on my Mac.

Conrad Cunningham

On Fri, Dec 1, 2017 at 1:26 AM, Dirk Laurie <dirk.laurie@gmail.com> wrote:

2017-12-01 8:51 GMT+02:00 Hakki Dogusan <hakki@dogusan.net>:

> I think these magic numbers come from printer column sizes;
> normal mode:80 ch, condensed mode:132 ch.
> (for continuous form dot-matrix printers)

Older than that. In the 1960s, typewriters could do 8 inches wide
(leaving ¼in margins for the sprocket holes), giving 80 characters
at 10cpi (known as pica) but some typewriters did 96 characters
at 12cpi (known as elite). Punched cards had 80 columns.