Why would someone want a line after 80 chars? (your blogtitle suggests a horizontal line ;) ). I understand that if you're on a very wide monitor, and someone else you have to work with isn't, it's not that great to have very looooooong lines, but then again, what purpose does it serve otherwise?
Now to be honest I have never really bought into the whole "no line longer than 80 chars" convention. Sure, I believe that really long line are annoying as hell, but I also think that 80 characters is way too restrictive.
Of course I could just set the guide to 120 chars! ;)
80 characters is the normal limit for printing out code on 8.5 by 11 sheet of paper, otherwise the code wraps. However, I agree that some Dot.Net code can be quite long.
I thought the 80 characters stemmed from FORTRAN punch card days; didn't they have an 80 char limit or something?
Yes, typical punced cards (regardless of language or data punched onto them) were 80 columns, other formats and spacing did exist. I have quite a quantity of blank cards from my college days, when we had to buy our own. (Don't ask how long ago, I won't admit)
Back to the vertical rule in VS.Net: I've tried this in VS6.0 and it doesn't seem to do anything. Anyone have different mileage to report??
This also works in VS 2005. Just change the "7.1" to "8" when looking for the registry key.
I generally have one set at 80, and another at 100. This gives me a bit of room to play, and I use the second line as a "point of no return".