Recommended line length in RST files in the Docs

I have a question regarding the formatting of RST files in the Docs. I have not seen any specific guidelines regarding the recommended line length, so I am curious whether there are any.

At the same time, when looking at users/config.rst, some lines seem to be cut at the ~80 character limit:

    Note that the scanned files are sent in batches and the sorting is applied
    only to the already discovered files. This means the sync might start with
    a 1 GB file even if there is 1 KB file available on the source device until
    the 1 KB becomes known to the pulling device.

while in other places they are much longer than that:

device
    These must have the ``id`` attribute and can have an ``introducedBy`` attribute,
    identifying the device that introduced us to share this folder with the given device.
    If the original introducer unshares this folder with this device, our device will follow
    and unshare the folder (subject to skipIntroductionRemovals being false on the introducer device).

Essentially, my question is, when writing or modifying the Docs, when should I cut the line and move to the next one.

Also, I know that some people may think that this is silly and not care about formatting, etc., but many open source projects are extremely strict when it comes to these things, hence the question.

We don’t have a hard policy for the docs, so it will depend on who wrote it and using which tool. I split my text lines at around 76 chars and prefer some sort of line splitting, although I’m fine with 130+ chars for code.

Do what the surrounding text in the doc does, unless it’s something unreasonable and in that case make an executive decision. :slight_smile:

Some people do semantic line splits, splitting only after sentences and such in order to improve diffs in future changes. That always seemed like a lot of hassle to me.

1 Like

Thank you for the explanation!

My first contribution to an open source project was a minor bug fix to the Linux kernel, and there everything is 100% regulated, so this is the background that I am coming from.

Now I will know which parts of the code were written by you :wink:.