PEP8 79 char max

[Skip Montanaro]

For the purposes of limiting the length you need to scan between first
and last column, I would recommend leaving the recommended line length
to ~ 80 columns.

Just for grins, I grabbed a non-computer book, Atul Gawande's
"Checklist Manifesto," from the pile on my desk and counted the number
of characters in a full-width line.  70.  Then I grabbed my copy of
"Mastering Regular Expressions" and counted the number of characters
in a full-width line of text which also included a few special
characters.  80.

I think the history of printing offers a good gauge for the useful
limits to line length.  After all, print publishers have been at this
for more than a few years.

As I typed this, Steven D'Aprano wrote:

> No, it is irrelevant to performance, except performance of the reader.

Whose performance, I would argue is most important.

I would like to hear of books meant to be read with page or column
widths of 100 or more characters.  I suspect they would be few and far
between.

Skip