Lines have a 20 column range for breaking. If you are particularly worried about tab variation, split the difference -- if you personally aim for a cut-off of 90 columns, you'll still fall in the 80-100 column range for most tab variations (until you get into multiple tabs, but at that point two 8-space tabs uses up ~16-20% of your usable space, and gets progressively more consumptive from there).
Nabil
On Wed, Aug 8, 2012 at 11:43 AM, Trevor Parscal tparscal@wikimedia.orgwrote:
I've always wondered about something:
Given the 2 rules:
- "Lines should be broken at between 80 and 100 columns."[1]
- "You should make no assumptions about the number of spaces per
tab."[2]
I have a couple of questions:
- What should we do if someone who uses 1 space tabs writes a 99
character line (including the tab)? - If you are using more than 1 space per tab, you they are breaking the 100 column rule.
- What should we do if someone who uses 8 space tabs tells you that you
are breaking the 100 column rule? - If you are using less than 8 spaces per tab, than you aren't breaking the 100 column rule.
I get why there's no value in starting a holy war over spaces-per tab, but this is a good example of why it's also a problem to not make a decision one way or another.
This is not hypothetical, we have people on our team (VisualEditor) who use 8, 4 and 3 (that I know of).
- Trevor
[1] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/CC#Line_continuation [2] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/CC#Tab_size