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From: "W. Wesley Groleau (Wes)" <wwgrol@PSESERV3.FW.HAC.COM>
Subject: IDENTIFIERS and other coding standards.
Date: 1997/04/02
Message-ID: <9704022133.AA22396@most>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 230332565
Sender: Ada programming language <INFO-ADA@LISTSERV.NODAK.EDU>
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU
Mailer: Elm [revision: 70.85]
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1997-04-02T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


In the absence of "empirical" evidence, the alleged "20%" increase in
readability for lower case is suspect.  I was also accustomed to lots of
UPPER CASE in Pascal before joining an Ada team trying to change their
style to be mixed case.  Though it took me a while to get used to typing
initial caps, I did not resist, because (unlike Robert Dewar) it seemed
to me easier to read write off the bat.  Perhaps, as Robert suggested,
this difference is because I read MANY more lines of English than Ada, thus
my brain was more comfortable with more lower case than with lots of CAPS.
Which goes along with Robert's hypothesis that if it _is_ easier to read,
it's only because it's like what readers are accustomed to.

The bottom line is _if_ it's easier to read, let's use it, regardless of
_why_ it's easier.

I would still like to find genuine experimental evidence if any exists.

I did read a study once that showed clear readability differences
correlated with four aspects of typography.  But casing was not one of
them.

A QUESTION on a related subject:

Has anyone ever seen a "policy" on blank lines which is less subjective
than the AQS "Use blank lines to group logically related lines of text" ?

(For that matter, are there any studies on the effectiveness of various
strategies for using blank lines?)

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W. Wesley Groleau (Wes)                                Office: 219-429-4923
Hughes Defense Communications (MS 10-41)                 Home: 219-471-7206
Fort Wayne,  IN   46808                  (Unix): wwgrol@pseserv3.fw.hac.com
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