Subj : Program Quoter - you are very welcomed
To   : alexander koryagin
From : Ardith Hinton
Date : Fri Mar 02 2018 18:00:57

Hi, Alexander!  Recently you wrote in a message to Anatoliy Kovalenko:

ak> But I strongly doubt that you always make your windows so wide to be
ak> able to write 120 symbol lines.


           Maybe he can, if he is using a GUI interface and/or he has a wider 
screen than you & I do and/or he has 25-year-old eyes....  ;-)

           I also tend to make a clear distinction between reading & writing, 
however.  Just for fun I typed a series of periods here to see if there was a 
limit to how many characters I could type on a single line.  At 294 I figured 
there was no point in proceeding any further, because in actual practice I am 
using words & I would have been feeling quite lost shortly after whatever I'd 
just written began to disappear off the screen to my left.  Once I'd saved my 
experiment timEd organized it this way:

_ _ _ O / _ _ C_U_T_ H_E_R_E_ _ _ _
      O \
.................................................................................
.................................................................................
.................................................................................
....................................................... (80 characters per 
line).

_ _ _ O / _ _ C_U_T_ H_E_R_E_ _ _ _
      O \

IOW, the author of timEd seems to agree with you & with the publishers of the 
non-reference book which came closest to hand in our household as to the line 
length we can reasonably expect other adults to take in.  (See below.)



           I've added "ak>" to the beginning of the next line, because it's a 
continuation of what you said, but made no attempt to improve on the spacing:

ak> It means that you usually set a
ak> reasonable width for your window, and you see lines that are hardly
ak> longer than 80 symbols.


           That does appear to be the case when I connect over the web with a 
BBS I use occasionally to track down missing Fidonet mail.  Although there is 
enough space on the display screen to accommodate longer lines there's also a 
generous margin on both sides... with the result that messages are centred on 
the screen.  If I re-read my own work I see no significant difference between 
the way it looked when it left here & the way it looks on the other BBS.  :-)



ak> 60-80 symbols width is the most comfortable width for the text. We
ak> used it in books and etc.


           Interesting idea.  As the sort of person who likes to verify other 
people's observations for herself, I counted the characters per line in a few 
lines selected at random from a biography written by an emeritus professor of 
Greek & Latin.  I would estimate the language he used there as "some college" 
level... i.e. probably about the same educational level as that of his former 
students & of the average participant in Fidonet nowadays.

           By my reckoning the vast majority of lines in this book are within 
the limits you've suggested.  Exceptions complicated by indentation, footnote 
numbers & whatnot appear to be shorter rather than longer....  :-)




--- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+
 * Origin: Wits' End, Vancouver CANADA (1:153/7715)

.