Why wrap @ 80?

[cbbrowne-HInyCGIudOg at public.gmane.org]

> On Fri, Apr 23, 2004 at 06:00:09PM -0400, gabriel wrote:
> > sorry to rain on everyone's history less (as interesting as it is... i
> > had no idea this issue went so far back)  i have to ask.  when then
> > are we going to abandon this very, very old obsolete standard?  i
> > understand that there's still a great many users on this list and
> > elsewhere using mutt and pine etc.  but why don't those programs
> > compensate for 80+ character lines?  wouldn't this help the rest of us
> > get out of this nearly century-old restriction?
> 
> Because human eyes have not changed.  

It's even more than "century-old."  The common widths of book pages are
several centuries old.

You can't fit a number of characters across a page that will be vastly
different from 80 characters and still be able to expect people to read
it efficiently.

To be sure, 72 and 80 character limits were long the result of common
punched cards being of those sizes, but an 80 character limit is no
random coincidence.  And yes, it has to do with our eyes.
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