From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.6 (2021-04-09) on
	ip-172-31-65-14.ec2.internal
X-Spam-Level: 
X-Spam-Status: No, score=-2.9 required=3.0 tests=BAYES_00,NICE_REPLY_A
	autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.6
Path: eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!news.szaf.org!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail
From: Niklas Holsti <niklas.holsti@tidorum.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: max line length
Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2022 09:38:00 +0300
Organization: Tidorum Ltd
Message-ID: <jc73m8F36cpU1@mid.individual.net>
References: <625ddf23$0$26323$426a34cc@news.free.fr>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Trace: individual.net Cd+XHW3N5Sxj0bUhgcBawgp93IBX2pglyvHU+F7ISxNnC+g0BD
Cancel-Lock: sha1:w3tg73pnBqH6rYsjjkkY6LI50oo=
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.14; rv:91.0)
 Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/91.6.2
Content-Language: en-US
In-Reply-To: <625ddf23$0$26323$426a34cc@news.free.fr>
Xref: reader02.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:63759
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

On 2022-04-19 0:58, Thomas wrote:
> hi :-)
> 
> 
> how do you set your max line length?
> 
> using indentations a lot, i find that 80 is short.


I limit lines to 80 characters, because I very often want to use a 
side-by-side diff of file versions, which means having a window wider 
than two line-lengths. Text in a 170-character-wide window is still 
readable, but wider ones are not, for me as an older guy with stiff 
eye-lenses.

To make do with 80-character lines, I often use local or partial 
use-clauses, and I divide long calls across many lines, usually having 
only one parameter per line. By a "partial use clause" I mean, for 
example, "use Interfaces", when I really need to use Interfaces.C, so I 
still have to qualify with "C.zzz" but not with "Interfaces.C.zzz".

I also group subsystems into package families (parent and child 
packages) which means that the children can directly use parent-declared 
identifiers without qualification.

Other means to keep lines short include using a small indentation step 
(I now use 3 spaces, but I'm considering changing to 2 spaces) and 
keeping subprograms short, which also helps the readability.