Proposal4: Show := on fileout / pretty print
Karl Goiser
Lists at TassieMade.com.au
Mon Jun 5 00:15:40 UTC 2000
Hello,
>Coopers and Peters published a commercial product for VST called Edit.
I think it was called edIt or EdIt or something like that...
>It did exactly this. I used it for a while and found it to be very
>useful. I got to look at anybody's code in MY style. It used an
>external DLL to parse each method as you entered a code pane and then
>formatted it according to your style rules. It was very, very slick.
I agree. It was a _fantastic_ piece of software. A few years ago I
worked in conjunction with 3-4 others doing Visual Smalltalk
programming and we used to spend lots of time arguing the point about
this or that layout. Even when we decided on a format one of us
would (accidentally?) not comply here or there.
I got EdIt in and the discussions stopped overnight - allowing us to
spend the time saved developing!
I didn't customise the formatting for myself because the default was
very reasonable.
I have a theory about this: :-)
When you read code, comprehension is faster if its graphical
structure is consistent with your expectations - what you are used
to. Obversely, if you read code that is inconsistent with the way
you are used to reading it, comprehension is much slower. It's like
English books with chapters, Paragraphs and sentences that begin with
capital letters - they all aid in speed of comprehension.
To my mind, it doesn't matter what the actual format of the code is,
as long as it is consistent (actually, I guess it has to be fairly
reasonable). Even if you don't like the way a pretty printer formats
your code, if you get used to it, you will find it really speeds your
comprehension.
It's a bit like Smalltalk itself, once you get used to a pretty
printer, it's hard to go back!
>It looks like they are now part of MS.
Sucked into the black hole!! What a shame.
Karl
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