In defence of 80-char lines

[Dennis Lee Bieber]

I also tend to prefer a maximum between 110 and 120 characters. I find continuation lines confusing, and when you use some third-party tools, such as wxPython, for example, the boilerplate code leads to some long lines.

I would hate to have to break up this line, for instance:

self.mainLabel.SetFont(wx.Font(12, wx.DEFAULT, wx.NORMAL, wx.BOLD, faceName = "FreeSans"))

Whereas I would consider breaking at the commas somewhat natural

self.mainLabel.SetFont(wx.Font(12,
wx.DEFAULT,
wx.NORMAL,
wx.BOLD,
faceName="FreeSans") )

 

[Roy Smith]

Is using csv.DictReader with delimiter=' ' not sufficient for this? I
did not actually read the regular expression in its entirety.

I believe your second sentence answers the question raised in your first
sentence

 

[Steven D'Aprano]

With "unicode fonts", where even the monospaced fonts present char
widths with a variable width depending on the unicode block (obvious
reasons), speaking of a "text width" in chars has not even a sense.

A properly-designed Unicode monospaced font should still be monospaced.
Or at worst, bispaced, if it also supports East Asian halfwidth and
fullwidth forms. In that case, the text width in chars should be
interpreted as halfwidth chars. Or if you prefer, the rule can be
interpreted as:

Line width should be no greater than 79 halfwidth characters, or 39
fullwidth characters, or some combination thereof.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halfwidth_and_fullwidth_forms