asking for guidance on length of line in terminal

Paul Merrell marbux at gmail.com
Sat Mar 18 05:17:49 UTC 2017


On Fri, Mar 17, 2017 at 7:25 PM, Al Sten-Clanton
<albert.e.sten_clanton at verizon.net> wrote:

> In gnome-terminal, "stty -a" told me the terminal has a wimpy twenty-four
> lines and eighty columns.  I note that I haven't yet asked anybody to look
> at the screen in gnome-terminal.
>
> I'd like to have a high number of lines, though I also haven't checked if
> those looked like a problem in my text console.  I'd also like lines longer
> than eighty characters, but want to know the longest line people think I can
> have that shows up completely on the screen.  I've never had a problem
> reading these long lines with Speakup, but from time to time I may need
> somebody to look at my stuff on the screen.  Also, if I ever share program
> code or anything else with sighted folks, I want it to look right.  Any
> suggestions?

24 lines x 80 characters was standard with the now near-obsolete VGA
terminal. That was the screen dimension in lines and columns.

There will be no optimal for sighted folks since the number of columns
will vary with SVGA screen resolution.

You might look to GUI text editor settings for guidance since most
folk will be viewing your code in one. Most I'm aware of use 72
characters as the default line break column, e.g., if line-wrapping is
turned on, the 73rd character will be placed on a new "line". Since
people are unlikely to turn off line-wrapping just to view your code
unless you place a prominent commented warning to do so at the top of
the file.

The number of lines should be irrelevant since they can scroll to view
any number of lines.

IMHO.

Best regards,

Paul




-- 
[Notice not included in the above original message:  The U.S. National
Security Agency neither confirms nor denies that it intercepted this
message.]




More information about the Blinux-list mailing list