Re: Case dependence and coding standards

[Wesley Groleau <wesgroleau@despammed.com>]

> I *don't* allow pretty-printers and CM systems to modify my code; my
> experience is that they make it worse as often as they make it better.

Often true--not always.  I use to call the one in Apex
the "ugly-printer" but they've considerably improved it.

> (The inability to turn off Rational's pretty printer in their editor is
> a great frustration to me.) I don't even think it is possible to write a

Yes, it can be turned off.  And it's behavior can be modified
by view switches and/or environment variables.

> pretty printer that will do a good job in general; such programs can't
> know when to line up declarations and when not to; when to leave

Rational's pretty-printer as of 4.2 can vertically align all of:

:=  in  out  =>  :  --    (although it's still not perfect)

In version 3.2, if you put two spaces at the end of a line,
it would somewhat preserve your own alignment.  If I remember
right, Ada-ASSURED can do vertical alignment also.

> comments alone and when to reformat them; and so on. (And I've tried to
> write one; you'll find it in Janus/Ada.)

I can't remember whether Ada-ASSURED can do this.
Seems to me I've seen one somewhere that can do it.