Re: The Elements of Informix-4gl Style?

Path: emory!swrinde!mips!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!qt.cs.utexas.edu!cs.utexas.edu!asuvax!mcdphx!udc!motcsd!starnet!pmahler From: pmahler@StarConn.com (Paul Mahler) Newsgroups: comp.databases.informix Keywords: 4gl style Message-ID: <1992Mar12.000729.17820@StarConn.com> Date: 12 Mar 92 00:07:29 GMT References: <29B7A050.1042@tct.com> <1992Mar09.021316.10584@dickens.com> <29BC2DE7.7F9D@tct.com> <1992Mar10.210913.18231@dickens.com> Organization: Starnet-Public Access UNIX--Los Altos, CA 415-949-3133 Boy, do I love this discussion!! What fabulous responses!! What a fabulous bunch of programmers!! Anyway, Louis has said this is a matter of taste or style rather than something we can discuss objectively. I would hope that we can find some objective critera. For example, there are studies that have been done that show that certain type sizes with certain leading with certain line lengths are easier to read at certain ages. As for TASTE, I wouldn't make all my NOUNS capitals when I was writing ENGLISH. I wouldn't CAPITALIZE all my verbs, either. But in Enlish some nouns are started with a cap as a matter of style, and in German, all nouns start with a cap. There seem to be two issues in the discussion. First is the idea of capitlalizing all keywords, which is what I object to. It's slow to type, it doesn't, I think, (insert your own subjective opinion here) make the code more readable, and it's not like other things I'm used to reading, like English. The other issue is program looks as far as indents and spacing and starting and stopping statements. When should an if statement start and end? What goes where in a case statement. I would love to have a beautifier that made all the code look the same. even, gag, perhaps at the expense of all upper case KEYWORDS. -- -------------------------------------------------------------- Paul Mahler internet: pmahler@StarConn.com Consultant 1800 Market St. #257 voice: 415.327.6737