Norman Vine writes:
> IMHO the biggest obstacle to reading and developing FGFS code 
> is the formatting
> 
> We really need a mechanical formating means that is acceptable to every
> one as the CVS standard even if it is not perfect or even close to what one
> would personally use. 

When I've looked, I've not found any acceptably tools to do automatic
formatting of C++ code.  The *very* few tools that did exist either
were far too simplistic and weren't to the point of actually being
useful or made horrible awful choices without providing a way to
override those choices.  The closest thing I've found to a usable tool
is emacs, but that is interactive and not something you can batch, and
it is very limitted in what it does and occasionally does some ugly
stuff too.

FWIW, I try to fix really poorly / inconsistantly formated code as
it's submitted, but I'm not perfect either.

> This way everyone could format the code in a way that helped them
> understand it and the CVS maintainers could easily compare submissions
> against existing code
> 
> FWIW
> I find a large percentage of the code very difficult to read because of
> indentation does not match structure and lack of whitespace
> 
> I know that Curt often has had a difficult time with my submissioons
> because of massive whitespace change but in all due respect the
> majority of these changes were necessary inorder fo me to understand
> the code.

With all corresponding due respect, these white space changes may help
you understand the code, but they are anything but consistant, and
they rarely follow the conventions of the code you are tweaking.

That IMHO just makes things a lot messier and harder for anyone else
to read.

> I realize that this is a 'religous' issue and a 'tough' problem but IMHO
> it is a major obstacle to FGFS code evolution

I'd be happy if somewone could find a decent code [re]formatter that
gave us enough flexibility to make our own style choices and didn't
have glaring ommission or do really stupid things.

BTW, Norman, are you having fun hitting all the religeous hot buttons
here since your return? :-)

Curt.
-- 
Curtis Olson   IVLab / HumanFIRST Program       FlightGear Project
Twin Cities    [EMAIL PROTECTED]                  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Minnesota      http://www.menet.umn.edu/~curt   http://www.flightgear.org

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