In defence of 80-char lines

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Thu, 04 Apr 2013 13:28:04 -0700, jmfauth wrote:

> With "unicode fonts", where even the monospaced fonts present char
> widths with a variable width depending on the unicode block (obvious
> reasons), speaking of a "text width" in chars has not even a sense.

A properly-designed Unicode monospaced font should still be monospaced. 
Or at worst, bispaced, if it also supports East Asian halfwidth and 
fullwidth forms. In that case, the text width in chars should be 
interpreted as halfwidth chars. Or if you prefer, the rule can be 
interpreted as:

Line width should be no greater than 79 halfwidth characters, or 39 
fullwidth characters, or some combination thereof.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halfwidth_and_fullwidth_forms


-- 
Steven