> that you cannot cite one authoritative reference for that piece of pseudo-science.

Well please define "authoritative reference", psychologists will normally argue from study to study about methodology and sample. (for instance I'm dyslexic and color blind, did they cover my group in their sample?)

Anyway ...

I was referring from memory (I earned my first money hacking for a DTP product) about what I read about typographical Line_length which is at least normatively set to between 45 and 75 characters.

Normative means we got used to it, like we got used to a decimal system, which is not necessarily the objective best of all parallel universes.

Additionally there are subjective preferences:

60% of respondents indicated a preference for either the shortest (35 CPL) or longest (95 CPL) lines used in the study. At the same time, 100% of respondents selected either one of these quantities as being the least desirable *

Which seems to indicate that around middle you'll have the least discussions with annoyed users.

Anyway all these studies deal - like I said - with prose in paragraphs, not intended code, and I said I'm not dogmatic here.

Code is actually two column text, because comments are best aligned

Regarding your question: So the above WP article lists some studies, do I need to copy&paste them and are they "authoritative" enough? ²

Question: what is the blind text in different sizes supposed to tell us???

Cheers Rolf
(addicted to the Perl Programming Language :)
Wikisyntax for the Monastery

*) Hmm ... wondering what dyslexic guys prefer...

²) NB: the German WP article highlights the importance of line spacing while the English strangely doesn't seem to mention it.

In reply to Re^3: To <=80 char code line length or not by LanX
in thread To <=80 char code line length or not by stevieb

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