too many lines too long

[Simon Marlow]

I also use multiple 80-column windows side-by-side, and long lines are 
quite unreadable.  I have a local emacs key binding to make the window 
120 wide temporarily for when I'm working on Simon's code :-)  There's 
also the issue of having side-by-side diffs in Phabricator being 
readable on a laptop screen, for which I think 80 is a reasonable limit.

I think the current level of nagging in Phabricator isn't terrible, 
though if we want to make it less annoying I believe it's also possible 
to make it an "advice"-level warning, which wouldn't force you to 
explain yourself, but it would still appear in the diff.

Cheers
Simon

On 09/11/2015 22:51, Richard Eisenberg wrote:
> At both school and at home I can fit 3 80-character buffers side by side, at a comfortable font size. Going up (even to 85 cols) would mean losing a buffer. (Or straining my eyes.) Of course I can deal with wrapped lines. But I still vote for 80 characters as a target, while allowing people wiggle room to miss this target.
>
> The number 80 is with us for historical reasons, but I know I'm not the only one who still routinely uses 80-column buffers.
>
> Richard
>
> On Nov 9, 2015, at 5:45 PM, Simon Peyton Jones <simonpj at microsoft.com> wrote:
>
>> In my view 80 chars is too short.  It was justified in the days of 80-column CRTs, but that just isn't a restriction any more.   I routinely edit in a much wider window.
>>
>> Clearly there's a judgement call here.  But I'd prefer 120 cols say.
>>
>> Simon
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: ghc-devs [mailto:ghc-devs-bounces at haskell.org] On Behalf Of Richard Eisenberg
>> Sent: 09 November 2015 21:03
>> To: ghc-devs Devs <ghc-devs at haskell.org>
>> Subject: too many lines too long
>>
>> Hi devs,
>>
>> We seem to be uncommitted to the ideal of 80-character lines. Almost every patch on Phab I look through has a bunch of "line too long" lint errors. No one seems to do much about these. And Phab's very very loud indication of a lint error makes reviewing the code harder.
>>
>> I like the ideal of 80-character lines. I aim for this ideal in my patches, falling short sometimes, of course. But I think the current setting of requiring everyone to "explain" away their overlong lines during `arc diff` and then trying hard to ignore the lint errors during code review is wrong. And it makes us all inured to more serious lint errors.
>>
>> How about this: after `arc diff` is run, it will count the number of overlong lines before and after the patch. If there are more after, have the last thing `arc diff` outputs be a stern telling-off of the dev, along the lines of
>>
>>> Before your patch, 15 of the edited lines were over 80 characters.
>>> Now, a whopping 28 of them are. Can't you do better? Please?
>>
>> Would this be ignored more or followed more? Who knows. But it would sure be less annoying. :)
>>
>> What do others think?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Richard
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