[dpdk-dev] [PATCH 2/3] docs: adjust line lengths in FreeBSD GSG rst files

[Iremonger, Bernard]

Hi Bruce, Thomas,

> Subject: Re: [dpdk-dev] [PATCH 2/3] docs: adjust line lengths in FreeBSD GSG rst files
> 
> On Wed, Dec 03, 2014 at 02:23:44PM +0100, Thomas Monjalon wrote:
> > 2014-11-24 15:48, Bruce Richardson:
> > > The FreeBSD GSG rst files had very inconsistent line lengths for
> > > text within paragraph blocks. Sometimes a line would be very short,
> > > while often lines would be quite long.
> > > This patch adjusts the formatting of the rst files so that lines
> > > break at approx the 80-character mark, as is standard in the DPDK source code.
> >
> > I'm not sure we should be strict with line lengths in the doc.
> > The most important thing is to limit the wrapping impact of future patches.
> > Starting a new sentence at the beginning of the line is often a good
> > way to keep context lines unchanged when updating only one sentence.
> > Don't forget that a carriage return in rst has no impact on generated doc.
> >
> > --
> > Thomas
> 
> Hi Thomas,
> I agree that we shouldn't be strict, but the variance in line length was really huge, and shorter lines are
> always easier to read. Even my patch just limited line length to somethign between 80-90 depending
> on wording, since a hard-80 I feel is too extreme.
> 
> /Bruce

When converting the documents originally I chose to wrap sentences that were longer than 120-130 characters.
I normally wrapped at a punctuation point for readability. So a long sentence might wrap over several lines.
Sentences shorter than 130 characters were given a separate line.
I don't think there is anything to be gained by reworking the line lengths as it has no effect on the generated  HTML.

Bernard.