Re: [Q] Tools for Ada Quality and Style [LONG]

[bobduff@world.std.com (Robert A Duff)]

In article <4xwx2w8dn5.fsf_-_@leibniz.enst-bretagne.fr>,
Laurent Guerby <Laurent.Guerby@enst-bretagne.fr> wrote:
>   The "reasonable default"  remark is a  good point.  If  you look at
>the evoluation of  emacs   (19.N), there's less and    less to do   to
>customize, and there's  more and more stuff in  menus.  I disagree for
>the "the program doesn't need ..." in a general sense, of course elisp
>programmers are free to write their free code as they want ;-).

One of the main benefits of Free Software is that you get the source
code.  But one of the main problems with Free Software is that you get
the source code.  [And end up wasting time hacking on it.]

>   On  the learing  side,  "an Introduction  to  Emacs LISP" is freely
>available under your favourite info mode ;-) and tailored for that.

Amusing typo: "learing".  ;-)

>- I like  the way the Ada  mode works as an  Ada aware editor.  If you
>type "beghin" instead  of "begin", the word stay  in black, instead of
>blue  (or violet  ;-) as  usual for  a  keyword, no   need to run  the
>compiler. If you've omitted a ";",  TAB doesn't work  well on the next
>line (idem  for imbricated constructs),  so you're  aware of it really
>soon.

Yes, that's helpful sometimes.  Other times, I find it annoying.  (E.g.
I want to type in the "else" half of an 'if' statment first.)

>   Note that every  item  here is  a matter of  taste (except annoying
>bugs in your  tool ;-). There's  no  unique solution  to these issues,
>only  two useful advices (from AQ&S)  : "think about  it ASAP" and "be
>consistent".

Yes.  The problem with these "taste" matters, is that everybody seems to
think that their own personal taste is more important than obeying some
agreed-upon conventions.  (One nice thing about the GNAT project is that
everybody agrees to follow the project-wide conventions, and they do it,
even though I'm sure some of the programmers disagree with some of the
conventions.)  In a more mature industry, there would be industry-wide
agreements, rather than merely project-wide agreements, or merely
personal opinions.

- Bob