On 11/8/2017 6:15 PM, Warner Losh wrote:

xterms killed that requirement for me a long time ago.

It killed 80 columns, but not 8 character hard tabs!

Whoever came up with 4 column tabs should be shot. ;)

On 11/8/2017 6:24 PM, Andy Kosela wrote:

On Thursday, November 9, 2017, Arthur Krewat <krewat@kilonet.net> wrote:

xterms killed that requirement for me a long time ago.

I still use 80 columns on my xterms. Like Larry said, most things in Unix still looks perfect on 80 columns display, plus it's easier to read -- less eye movements from left to right. If you think about it, regular books have a similar format. It has been scientifically proven that very long lines are just harder and slower to read.

Besides programming, system administration and other tasks these days sometimes requires a few more columns than 80:

http://pdp10.kilonet.org/images/xterm.jpg

And that's just one example.

I forgot to mention my using xterms past 80 columns wasn't so much about writing code (although, I do regularly go past 80 columns) but general UNIX stuff too.

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BTW, no disrespect to anyone here, whatever floats your boat ;)