On Sun, Dec 15, 2019, at 7:32 PM, James Tomasino wrote:
> On 12/15/19 6:12 PM, Aaron Janse wrote:
> > But none of these examples require reflowing text in the source code, right?
> > In markdown, if you want text to reflow, you just let it go past 80 columns,
> > or whatever the viewport width is. So this entire paragraph would have no
> > newlines in its source code.
> >
> > fn main() {
> > print!("But none of this text reflows because ")
> > println!("it's less than the viewport width.")
> > }
>
> Source code can be longer than 80 columns. Also, some clients may not
> want to use 80 column widths. We have mobile gopher clients favoring 40
> columns.
Correct. I should never have said "80 columns." Instead, I should have said
"viewport width" each time.
The problem with wrapping code when it gets wider than the viewport, as said
previously on this mailing list, is that it breaks semantic meaning,
expecially for languages like Python.
One alternative for clients is behaving like `less`: truncate code
horizontally and require the viewport to be widened in order to select/copy
code with the cursor. This doesn't seem much easier to copy code from than
simply widening the viewport until code is no longer wrapped.
Or, clients take the approach of Github on mobile: truncate code visually but
allow it to be properly copied graphically. But, couldn't this work for
wrapping code, too? Most graphical text editors will show long lines of code
as wrapped but, when copied, long lines preserve their original line breaks.
Maybe I'm missing something.
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