Re: [patch] more comment cleanups

Doug Evans
2011-01-03T19:33:12Z

On Sun, Jan 2, 2011 at 9:05 PM, H.J. Lu <hjl.tools@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 2, 2011 at 8:33 PM, Joel Brobecker <brobecker@adacore.com> wrote:
>>> So what do others think about source lines over 70 columns?
>>
>> Enforcing a maximum length of 70 characters seems awfully low to me.
>> It's fine if someone decides to use 70 characters for his comments,
>> of even his code, but I think that 76 or 78 would give better results.
>> I even allow myself to go up to 80 when splitting a line makes it
>> particularly ugly and hard to read...
>>
>
> ChangeLog should be limited to 74 columns:
>
> [hjl@gnu-6 gdb]$ tail gdb/ChangeLog
>
> For older changes see ChangeLog-2009.
>
>
> Local Variables:
> mode: change-log
> left-margin: 8
> fill-column: 74
> version-control: never
> coding: utf-8
> End:
> [hjl@gnu-6 gdb]$

OOC, where did the number 74 for ChangeLog entries come from?

Having different values for different kinds of files seems problematic
and a nuisance.

If I had a choice, it'd be a convention of 79 for changelogs,
comments, code, .texi files, etc.
[Maybe I'd have a special case to have for some kind of file. The
only special case that comes to mind is in .texi files where for
certain things the line length spills over into the printed page, and
one needs to manually have shorter lines in the .texi source.]

My $0.02.