Re: Code Formatters

[Dave Smith <david.h.smith@gecm.com>]

As I seem to have started off a good old fashioned discussion on
the rights and wrongs of standards formats, let me add another
tw'pence worth.

Surely what we need are decent development environments with
good language sensitive editors. These should be able to read
a file containing the "rules" to be used for layout, the indenting,
capitalization, etc. being done as the code is typed in. 

Or maybe it would have been useful to have included the Ada
Style Guide (the "bible" as far as I am concerned) as part of
the ANSI standard. Them we would all have code that conformed to
the same layout.

To me, the reasons for having a standard layout are:

1) Coders don't need to think how to layout the code, and so
   can get on with the coding.

2) It's easier to read someone else`s code.

3) Having a standard layout makes it easier to give the code
   listings to the customer. The last thing I want to do is to
   send a customer the listings for ten packages all using a
   different style.

BTW

Thanks to Robert Dewar for getting involved in this thread...
"We are not worthy!"

Dave Smith
Chief Software Engineer
GEC-Marconi S3I
Combat Systems Division
Addlestone
England