Re: ACM Ada Letters

[Georg Bauhaus <sb463ba@l1-hrz.uni-duisburg.de>]

Marin David Condic <nobody@noplace.com> wrote:
: 
: 
: Georg Bauhaus wrote:
:> 
:> No, no, no, the alignment can be done (not overriden) by the
:> formatting program, either by respecting the space character count,
:> or by using an alignment algorithm using whatever fonts you have
:> chosen!  You type plain characters.  The PP program is Ada-aware,
: 
: How does it know what fonts I have chosen? It either needs to do it on 
: the fly or it needs to store that information with the program text. 

No, there is a mapping from syntactical categories to fonts.
(And it is that mapping that you as a user can modify, plus
other parameters.)
For example, keywords in bold, identifiers in italics,
Symbols in a symbol/math font, etc., or everything in
a fixed width font, or ...


: Same with possible variations in formatting style, etc. Either you 
: rebuild it every time (and no possible consistencey between when done by 
: my program and when done by yours.) or you have to store some 
: information with the file (and then you need a convention for doing that.)

This is what (ISO-)standardised style sheet languages are about.
You cannot (ever) expect pointwise equal output from
different typesetting systems, but you can set up a
framework that will allow typesetters to predict the results,
and to make necessary adjustments (e.g. due to different papersizes).

It will also free the programmer from having to think about
formatting, at least if he/she sticks to reasonable convention,
like not chosing identifiers longer than about 80 characters.
 
:> 
:> So there is no need for: 
:> 
: Yes there is - see above. Yes, you can write some formatting tool that 
: might go do some default actions on Ada source text and it might look 
: half-way nice, but the thing is, someone is going to quickly say "I want 
: Times" or "I Want Arial" or I want "Bookman Old Style" - not to mention 
: a wide range of possible formatting styles.

Again, see above, and please leave the professional work of
typesetting to typesetting professionals. Programmers should
concentrate on programming. :-) Well they might have a word in that,
to preserve some originality, but they shouldn't have to decide
the details, and typesetters might know ways to fulfill an author's
wishes so that everyone will like it.


: I'm not saying it can't be done - but if most Ada programmers wanted 
: some kind of typesetting capability for their source code, it seems to 
: make sense that the best way to do it would be with some kind of markup 
: kept inside the code. That's basically the way most word processors do it.

I don't think so, you don't store compiler flags in source
code either. WordPerfect did have formatting switches in the text
some time ago, but even back then there was a strong suggestion to
not do that: mix text and format.

:> Reminds me of the widespread use of spaces, tabs, and pressing
:> RETURN in place of using paragraph styles, automatic indenation,
:> automatic or forced page breaking, automatic keep-together features,
:> etc. that typesetting software and word processors have had for
:> some time know...
: 
: 
: Ahhh, the Good Old Days! :-) I *like* plain-old-ASCII and the limited 
: formatting it makes possible. Its simple. It works.

Yes, but only if used in for typesetting on a monospace only
device.

: And not everything 
: needs to be gold-plated. For program source code, I find it quite 
: adequate and of minimal fuss. For publishing a magazine, its 
: insufficient - but I don't do that very often.

Ah, I had that in mind (Ada Letters).

: Case in point: Once upon a time, if someone wanted to send a memo around 
: to the staff - they might have hand-scrawled it and xeroxed it and had 
: it going around the office in 15 minutes.

Right, and soon there were conventions like marking sections
with a '*', for extracting tables of contents, jumping and
so on, which is now found in WiKis, demonstrating the
pros and cons of informal markup.

: You can no longer make a resume or a presentation without 
: sophisticated typesetting and graphic arts. I think its overkill.

Yes. But try
$ a2ps -p some_unit.ps some_unit.adb

I think the defaults have some drawbacks, but it is quick and
easy, for source code only printouts used for off screen studying.

: I'm sure there are ways of auto-formatting Ada source text and using 
: proportional fonts, etc. I just don't think its necessarily very useful 
: or something most programmers want to spend their time doing.

Yeah, programmers shouldn't in general have to do that,
but for publications a proper choice of fonts can be
useful. But that choice need not be done by the programmer.

:  Maybe there are too many elements of 
: taste in formatting to make it possible to cater to everyone with a 
: program? Maybe not all judgements about what looks good can be codified?

Maybe there are just too many programmers who think they are
competent typesetters? :-)

I think that as soon as you deviate from plain monospaced
text you will have to be a competent typesetter.
And maybe even when you don't.


Georg