Is 78 characters still a good option? Was: [Haskell-cafe] breaking too long lines

[Richard Kelsall]

Dusan Kolar wrote:
...
> Or is the reason much deeper? Or, is the bound set to 78 characters just 
> because it is as good number as any other?
...
As a little historical detour I think the 80 character limit goes back
to 1928 when IBM designed their punched card format

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punched_card#IBM_80_column_punch_card_format

I guess it subsequently got embedded into printing and screen widths
and related software. The slightly less than 80 characters allows for
CR LF characters.


Richard.