Write thin to write fast • Hacker News Board

Re: Write thin to write fast

#141

Post by telotortium » Fri, Nov 12, 2021, 3:19 AM UTC

telotortium wrote: post #88

It would be cool if you could automatically do this in a browser, by essentially telling the browser to render a very long screen and then split it into however many columns fit on your screen (imagine taking a screenshot of your window, going down a page, taking another screenshot, and so on, and then putting these screenshots side by side). Questions: - Are there Ebook readers that can show many pages at once? - Ca…

I found out that the author of this article wrote it using a markup language called (confusingly) Scroll: https://scroll.pub/. I'm not sure I want to bother learning another markup language when there are many extensions to Markdown already, but this author apparently favors the multi-column layout.

I find scrolling all the way to the bottom of a thin column to get old fast, however, especially when the article is longer than can fit into a single page.

It's pretty easy to constrain the height of the article text div element to be slightly less than screen height (using `height: 100vh`, or maybe slightly smaller if you have a header), which makes the columns fit vertically within the screen but causes more columns to appear off-screen to the right. However, you can override PageUp and PageDown to scroll left and right instead: https://github.com/publicdomaincompany/scroll/issues/10#issu....

That's pretty satisfying if you like to read in thin columns - almost like a poor man's PDF but completely in HTML.

Re: Write thin to write fast

#142

Post by TranquilMarmot » Fri, Nov 12, 2021, 5:21 AM UTC

adwn wrote: post #79

TranquilMarmot wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see some coworkers with ridiculous setups. Three monitors, one vertical, one ultrawide and curved. I don't see why you need that much screen to write code... when pressed they say it's for having references, Slack, etc. up on other screens but then you just end up moving your head around a lot (what a pain in the neck!) I do everything on a single 27" monitor.

> but then you just end up moving your head around a lot (what a pain in the neck!) If moving your head causes you neck pain, you should get that looked after ASAP! Generally, a static posture over a long time is really bad for your health. Make sure to stretch, fidget, move around, change your posture a lot when working with a screen.

Hahaha very good point :)

Re: Write thin to write fast

#143

Post by sasaf5 » Sat, Nov 13, 2021, 4:30 AM UTC

Column width has always affected my writting. The line breaks can hide some flow issues where punctuation might be necessary. For this reason I write on three emacs windows with different widths: one as narrow as suggested by OP, one more or less at target printer width, and one in between.

Re: Write thin to write fast

#144

Post by TranquilMarmot » Sat, Nov 13, 2021, 5:19 AM UTC

speleding wrote: post #115

TranquilMarmot wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see some coworkers with ridiculous setups. Three monitors, one vertical, one ultrawide and curved. I don't see why you need that much screen to write code... when pressed they say it's for having references, Slack, etc. up on other screens but then you just end up moving your head around a lot (what a pain in the neck!) I do everything on a single 27" monitor.

I love coding on a huge 40 inch screen: the main reason is that I can view an entire file without scrolling. Less mental overhead to move your hands means more brainpower is left to do useful work.

Did you see the post the other day about using a thin editor with very few columns?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29166673

It really got me thinking about monitor setups and how much space you _really_ need to write code.

Re: Write thin to write fast

#145

Post by speleding » Sat, Nov 13, 2021, 9:28 AM UTC

TranquilMarmot wrote: post #144

speleding wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love coding on a huge 40 inch screen: the main reason is that I can view an entire file without scrolling. Less mental overhead to move your hands means more brainpower is left to do useful work.

Did you see the post the other day about using a thin editor with very few columns? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29166673 It really got me thinking about monitor setups and how much space you _really_ need to write code.

Yeah, I read that one. As others in that thread point out there is research that actually shows long lines are better (with yet others in that thread questioning that research, but alas, it's certainly not a given shorter is better)

Re: Write thin to write fast

#146

Post by dredmorbius » Sat, Nov 13, 2021, 11:44 PM UTC

False premise on newspaper column widths AFAIU.

Thinner columns permit more individual stories on the front page, with more predictable lengths and layouts.

If column-width were optimised for reading comprehension, then one would expect to find internal content similarly laid out ... and it generally wasn't.

(I'm going off recollection rather than measurement here, but what I generally recall is that column-widths opened up on inside pages, especially for essays and the like.)

I'm not sure what all the contributing factors were, though I suspect tradition and fixed layout patterns especially for the front pages of newspaper section played a strong role, as well as a design that was optimised for scanning the front page when displayed at a news-stand or in a vending box as here:

https://www.travel-pictures-gallery.com/images/usa/washingto...

Skinny columns would show a lot of stories but not much story --- if you wanted more than the lede, you'd need to buy the actual paper.