Perhaps it's not immediately apparent from what I wrote that I totally agree with you. If you look closely at the example you have rewritten, you will see that the variable names I chose suggested the line break you supplied. Without doubt your rewrite is the "preferred solution".

My proposal is not aimed at monks who know how to break lines. Lots of people post stuff that "breaks" the formatting of the page. It is unlikely that these people will "learn" how to do it properly. If my proposal was implememted it gives a way to "fix" the code that occasionally gets posted by even the best.

Part of the problem is that a lot of "root" nodes are not editable once they have been submitted. Even if you see a problem in the thing you have just posted it is impossible to "fix" it. Then there is the problem with anonymous monks who do not even know how to use <font> tags. This is not a criticism of anonymous monks who have not visited the site before, the use of code tags is not intuitive, you need to be told about them and how to use them. Anonymous Monks (and monks posting for the first time) often post unreadable code that gets filled like normal text. If we have a problem getting them to use font tags, then we will surely have a problem educating them to break lines in sensible places. There is also the problem that different people use different screen resolutions and different font sizes in their browser. Things that fit correctly on your screen may not fit correctly on mine.

So yes I agree, people should learn how to post. While they are learning, it makes the site less usable and we will always (hopefully) have new members "learning" how to post. I don't think your "solution" fixes the problem.

Nuance

In reply to RE (2): Suggestion for dealing with unfeasibly long code lines by nuance
in thread Suggestion for dealing with unfeasibly long code lines by nuance

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.