Re: Quick question about Ada code formatting.

[Simon Wright <simon@pushface.org>]

Georg Bauhaus <bauhaus@futureapps.de> writes:

> A "hand writing" can work for one person, but not for an
> other person. People can, and do fight over whose handwriting
> viz. Ada style is better. Even neglecting the strong influence
> that a font can have on appearance. But I think there are much
> more important issues, and just -gnaty is overly strict here.

I don't believe that what we are doing is art. Artists tend not to get
paid as much as that.

If people won't abide by the simple things like the project style
guide, it acts as a warning bell that they're probably ignoring other,
more important, things.

> Good in my (limited) experience:
>
>  - Consistent use of whatever non-typographical convention
>    is in use.

Yes, precisely. That is *exactly* the point!

> An additional proof of -gnaty being overly strict is when it comes
> function names in GUI programming.  Many do not want to see '_'s in
> identifiers when they are use to them without the underscores. Note
> the "used to"... :-)

I don't understand that. I have GLIDE and GPS set up to recognise the
correct casing of lots of words: my ~/.emacs_case_exceptions is

ASCL
AUnit
BC
ColdFrame
GNAT
IDE
PragmaRC
*AVL
*DOM
*EWS
*HTTP
*IO
*XML

so that, for example, Text_IO comes out exactly like that as I
type. And ColdFrame like that.

> There is a study (from Kent?, comparing MISRA C and other style
> guides) that demonstrates how useless and wasteful typographic
> sophistry is.

Hmm, can't find anything like that on Google, any more pointers?