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

[Xiao-Yong Jin]

Dusan Kolar <kolar at fit.vutbr.cz> writes:

> Dear all,
>
>  reading that
>
>> according the several style guides, lines shouldn't be too long
>> (longer than 78 characters).
>>
>> http://www.cs.caltech.edu/courses/cs11/material/haskell/misc/haskell_style_guide.html
>> http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Programming_guidelines
>>   
> I would like to know, whether 78 characters bound still makes a
> sense... Even if I connect to my linux box with text terminal, it is
> not a 80x24 characters HW text terminal, but a window emulating this
> in whatever else OS, thus, I can usually extend this to see longer
> lines easily.
>
> Or is the reason much deeper? Or, is the bound set to 78 characters
> just because it is as good number as any other?

I believe it is a good practice too keep each line short and
easy to read.  The following is taken from python style
guide.

 Maximum Line Length

    Limit all lines to a maximum of 79 characters.

    There are still many devices around that are limited to 80 character
    lines; plus, limiting windows to 80 characters makes it possible to have
    several windows side-by-side.  The default wrapping on such devices
    disrupts the visual structure of the code, making it more difficult to
    understand.  Therefore, please limit all lines to a maximum of 79
    characters.  For flowing long blocks of text (docstrings or comments),
    limiting the length to 72 characters is recommended.

http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/

P.S.  We really need such a well written style guide for
      haskell.  Python has this nice PEP (Python Enhancement
      Proposals).  Should we start making our own HEP?
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