Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2003 12:57:28 -0500 From: Jason Andresen <jandrese@mitre.org> To: Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com> Cc: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: C coding editor Message-ID: <3E5D0008.20009@mitre.org> In-Reply-To: <200302260841.40693.wes@softweyr.com> References: <20030221122103.GA2073@asterix.local> <3E5A4264.2010801@millions.ca> <3E5A4BA9.5010700@mitre.org> <200302260841.40693.wes@softweyr.com>
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Wes Peters wrote: e your last scan of this sector. ;^) > > Seriously, limiting your programming for a lifetime to 80 columns > because you couldn't figure out how to make some grotty old dot > matrix printer do 8-point printing a decade ago really isn't all > that smart, is it? Even if I never have to print out on a printer like that, who's to say nobody else is? You will no doubt turn people away if they open up your code in their favorite programming editor and all of the lines wrap a few characters. Worse if they are already at the maximum size their screen/eyeballs can support. > I'm still disappointed at programming editors that can't make sense > of normal typefaces and have to be used with monospaced fonts. Same > for email, but that's a different argument. I find that monospace fonts are quite nice in programming on occasion when you want to line up output or just nicely format blocks of text. What about when someone opens up your project with a different font and all of the comments and blocks of code are all scattered across the screen in some haphazard looking mess? Visual distinctiveness and effective use of whitespace can be invaluble in helping people understand your code (or understanding other people's code). That's why people have settled on a format they can reproduce in almost all instances. Very few compilers accept code with formatting markup beyond ^Ls and TABs. You can't compile a Word document. -- \ |_ _|__ __|_ \ __| Jason Andresen jandrese@mitre.org |\/ | | | / _| Network and Distributed Systems Engineer _| _|___| _| _|_\___| Office: 703-883-7755 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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