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Re: [Pika-dev] Coding conventions
From: |
Thomas Lord |
Subject: |
Re: [Pika-dev] Coding conventions |
Date: |
Tue, 2 Nov 2004 10:22:36 -0800 (PST) |
> From: "Jose A. Ortega Ruiz" <address@hidden>
> Andreas Rottmann <address@hidden> writes:
> > Hi!
> > I'm just doing some evaluation of how merging the cports change into
> > the main archive affects my newly added code, and, expectedly, there
> > are some conflicts. Some of them would be avoidable if we stick to the
> > exact same coding conventions -- well, we use the GNU style, so far,
> > no issue, but jivera seems to use a window wider than 80 chars (just a
> > wild guess ;)), and consequently doesn't line-break at 80 chars. Can
> > we agree to do that (always break at 80 chars at most)?
> Hi. That's actually my preferred convention re line lengths, so that'd
> be OK with me.
Heavens. This conversation is /sooo/ 1985.
Here's my problem with the 80 character convention:
1. I'm also in favor of long identifier names.
2. Line breaks among the arguments to a function call should not be
randomly placed.
Thus, I'm often left with a choice between something like:
frob (foomodule_munge (zap_param, x), bazmodule_grunge, expert_knobs () + 10,
0, 0)
and something like:
frob(foomodule_munge (zap_param, x),
bazmodule_grunge,
expert_knobs () + 10,
0, 0)
The former, combined with wide windows, let's me get (in this case)
4x as many statements on the screen as otherwise!
I'm all for the 80-column restriction (actually a smaller limit) on
the parameter declaration part of a function definition (because I
expect that to be cut and pasted into documentation). I'm in favor of
the 80-col restriction on the commentary text that comprises
documentation. But for all those long function call statements: the
utility of wide windows seems dominant to me.
A roughly full-screen Emacs window should show must of the code that I
format in, at least roughly, the intended way.
In an emergency, deprived of anything but some ancient dec terminals,
I intend to print out pages of my code on a wide lineprinter and then
muddle through editting it on a VT-52 but, aside from that, I don't
seem to be suffering from the lack of interactive wide displays and
neither does nearly anyone else. So why not take advantage of them?
-t