There is little room for individuality in a coding community. I'd say it doesn't matter what you call your variables as long as someone who's never seen the code can understand the purpose through the name and/or comments, and they conform to any predefined naming standard for the project. Ages ago all variables had short names because disk space and/or memory was at a premium. Today that shouldn't be an excuse. Try to avoid overly simplistic names like x1 unless they have overly simplistic purpose (create, use, destroy within a 5 line method), and try to avoid overly verbose names. As long as what you write makes sense I'd agree with you no one should change the code simply for the sake of personal preference. You should certainly change it if you don't want someone else to change it if someone unfamiliar with it can't understand it. If they're changing your names that should be fine as long as they're fixing a bug or enhancing something where the name change makes sense to go with the new logic.
________________________________ From: Glenn Adams [mailto:gl...@skynav.com] Sent: Thursday, October 27, 2011 3:56 AM To: fop-dev@xmlgraphics.apache.org Subject: Re: Merge Request - Temp_ComplexScripts into Trunk On Thu, Oct 27, 2011 at 3:41 PM, Simon Pepping <spepp...@leverkruid.eu> wrote: > > > Ninth, spending time changing variable names is a waste of time when I > > could > > > be working on adding support for other scripts. > > > > So someone else is going to have to waste all that time converting those > > names into more readable ones. That's a bit unfair, isn't it? > > > > I would advise against anyone wasting their time by changing my names. > Indeed, I will likely react very negatively to such an attempt. What you > want to do in your code is your business, but don't imagine you are going to > start rewriting my code to meet your style. Or at least don't do so if you > wish me to be a part of this team. > > I would take such an action as a direct affront. This is a big no. At the moment you hand in your code to FOP, it belongs to the community. Anyone can touch it. That is where team membership kicks in. Team members trust each other not to do bad things to the code. > > If in the indefinite future I am not working on this code, then feel free to > change it as you like. In the mean time, I'd appreciate a little respect. Respect yes, but not touching it, no. I did not say or imply hands off, so of course I presume that anyone can touch it. Why do you insist on reading me otherwise? However, if someone actually renamed my variables after I have declared my position, then I would interpret that as "doing bad things to the code". In fact, i would revert such a change. If folks aren't willing to respect my style of coding along with my promise to document short names, then I will withdraw my request for a merge and abrogate my ICLA. I would not wish my work to be used in a community that does not have sufficient respect for personal coding styles of contributors that do not in any way vary from documented conventions. Simon Pepping
