5. Respect black line length

Date: 2023-08-30

Status

Accepted

Context

We should adhere to black’s default settings and line length.

From black’s own documentation: > “You probably noticed the peculiar default line length. Black defaults to 88 characters per line, which happens to be 10% over 80. This number was found to produce significantly shorter files than sticking with 80 (the most popular), or even 79 (used by the standard library). In general, 90-ish seems like the wise choice. … remember that people with sight disabilities find it harder to work with line lengths exceeding 100 characters. It also adversely affects side-by-side diff review on typical screen resolutions. Long lines also make it harder to present code neatly in documentation or talk slides.”

Decision

We have configured linting tools to use black’s default line length of 88.

Consequences

Linting tools for this repository are configured to accept black’s line length of 88 characters. Any additional linting tools should respect this.