Hi all developers,

I'd like to briefly review the decision for 120 chars line width we've taken some time ago. To make this clear, I don't want us to re-raise this issue on a weekly basis. But let's recap on what 120 has brought us?

I know of three developers not finding 120 chars appropriate.

One of them is me, I still think more than 80 would help a lot and remove the cumbersome need for wrapping lines in many places, but I would prefer 100 chars to 120. I end up getting wrapped lines and have to enlarge terminals such that only one fits on the screen at my preferred font size. I used to easily have two.

One objective argument against 120 is the gerrit website: scrolling left/right there is annoying, because for once there is the overall page scroll left/right if the window doesn't have enough space (on smaller screens), and then there's the side-scroll in the individual columns in the side-by-side view. So UI wise it is beneficial to minimize the need to scroll on the gerrit website.

For some time I have actually set my local line wrap to 105 and submitted a number of patches like that, but recently decided it's stupid if each of us chooses their own favorite, and set it to 120; hence the mail.

My guess is that I'm not the only one who picked his own local favorite, and if that is so we might as well re-assess the common average favorite, so that we can all use & enforce the same width.

In case we change this again: about the lines already merged in 120 width, I wouldn't want us to edit them and just live with a few 120 wide lines here and there.

What do you guys think? Would it make sense to have a "pick your favorite <= 120" rule? Rather re-negotiate one common width? Keep it at 120?

~N