> >Eventually, I hope we can dispense with 80 characters (like the Windows
> >world has already done) but for all the reasons mentioned here, I'm not
> >advocating changing that.
> ...
> for a plain text editor, you probably want to use a fixed spaced font,
> and stick to 80 columns.  like windows still does.

I didn't mean user output windows, I meant -code- windows. (We're all talking
-code- standards here, right?)


When people user Visual Studio to write Windows code, they don't even
-know- where the 80-column boundary is.  Windows long variable names help
program comprehensibility (but not hungarian notation, which has been
depricated long ago).


But I'm not arguing for > 80 column source code.

I'm arguing for 2-4 space indents.

-------------

The arguments for not changing remind me of an issue in the early days of C.

The C gang had screwed up precedence when they added && and || - but they
chose to ignore it, and we're stuck with stupid operator precedence in C.

Check out what Dennis Ritchie said:

http://www.lysator.liu.se/c/dmr-on-or.html

--------------

What I fail to understand is that if we have data that supports that 2-4
space indents produces more comprehensible code, and we believe that more
comprehensible code leads to fewer errors, less time understanding the code,
and a generally more robust system, why don't we do it?

-Mike