2009/4/21 Richard Kelsall
<r.kelsall@millstream.com>
Dusan Kolar wrote:
...
Or is the reason much deeper? Or, is the bound set to 78 characters just because it is as good number as any other?
...
As a little historical detour I think the 80 character limit goes back
to 1928 when IBM designed their punched card format
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punched_card#IBM_80_column_punch_card_format
I guess it subsequently got embedded into printing and screen widths
and related software. The slightly less than 80 characters allows for
CR LF characters.
Richard.