On Mon, Jun 23, 2008 at 09:58:31PM -0500, Aaron W. Hsu wrote: > Hey Steven, > > From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mon Jun 23 17:30:43 2008 > From: Steven Mestdagh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: ports@openbsd.org > Subject: Re: width of DESCR? > > Markus Bergkvist [2008-06-23, 22:25:49]: > > What should the width of DESCR be? "OpenBSD Porting > Checklist"[1] says 'fmt -w 72' and "Port Testing > Guide"[2] says 70 characters. > > I don't know where the fixation on 72 or 70 characters comes > from. I'd say it really does not matter that much, as long as > it does not exceed the usual 80 character terminal width. > > IIRC, the general usage of 72 characters was done as a courtesy for > users who were replying to mails, in order to make quoting more > reliable. If we us '>' as the quote character, than we could potentially > have eight nested quotes going without having to rewrap things terribly > much. With 72 characters, if one uses a tab character for quoting, this > means probably about one quote level is still possible without having to > rewrap the quote. > > As for why it would be a requirement in a ports DESCR file, I have no > idea.
I don't even remember that requirement. That said, 72 characters is a nice width for reading fixed-width formatted text. 80 characters is actually a bit too wide, too many words per line, the eye has difficulty tracking correctly to the beginning of the next line. Have a look at a printed novel sometime, you'll notice the lines are even shorter... We don't enforce it, but it's still a nice guideline.
