🚀 go-pugleaf

In comp.lang.java.advocacy Dale King <KingD@tce.com> wrote:
: "Jim Sculley" <niceguy@abraxis.com> wrote in message
:> Tim Tyler wrote:
:> > In comp.lang.java.advocacy Dale King <KingD@tce.com> wrote:

:> > : Which was my point that intra-line alignment is not a good idea.
:> >
:> > Intra-line alignment not a good idea?

: Not for portability and for maintainability. It takes effort to keep
: these things lined up.

There are "maintainability" benefits, though.  Ideally, a formatting tool
ought to be able to deal with the maintainability costs intelligently in
most cases.

It *is* very portable.  The only people who won't get the benefits are
those using PS fonts - and they can hardly expect to get the benefits,
since they have deliberately opted out from them.

Even if you don't get the benefits you're not much worse off
than you were before.  Things didn't line up then either.

:> > You mean things like:
:> >
:> > check("foo",    previous, current);
:> > check("wibble", current,  next);
:> > check("parf",   next,     previous);

: Note that this does not line up in my news
: reader as I use a proportional font. It is
: only portable between contexts that use a
: non-proportional font.

My attitude there is that anybody using proportional-spaced
fonts when writing code needs their head examined ;-)

Such people won't get the benefits.  They won't suffer much in
other ways, though - except perhaps when everyone else gets
pissed off at them for fouling up the project's formatting ;-)

: The maintainability comes in when you have to modify the code. Change
: the text for these things and you end up wasting time fixing the alignment.

Having things aligned helps with both readability and maintenance, though.
Any costs of editing it have to be offset against that.

Since notoriously you spend more time reading code than
editing it, this can be worth doing.

Maintaining alignment takes some effort.  However most of it is
grist for automation.  Ultimately, a formatter should take care
of it on your behalf.

For things like the example I gave, a CSV file formatter can be
used: select the table and filter it through a CSV alignment tool.

The result - IMO - is much more readable code, in many cases.
-- 
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 |im |yler  http://timtyler.org/  tim@tt1.org