[gdal-dev] Starting a discussion on style and coding guidelines

[Joaquim Luis]

Hi,

There is one aspect of the coding style that I honestly do not understand.  
Why continuing to recommend the 80 chars line width? I don't by the  
readability argument, well on the contrary, if because of it the result is  
an excess 'verticalization' of the code it becomes much harder to read.

I don't know for you guys but when I'm forced to permanently scroll up and  
down it becomes really much harder to study a code. For me the ideal is  
that a function holds in a single screen size, but ofc without piling up  
everything to reach that goal.

A little example from gdaldem_lib.cpp (line 240)

****************** Current code *********************************

     for ( i = 0; i < 2 && i < nYSize; i++)
     {
         if( GDALRasterIO(   hSrcBand,
                         GF_Read,
                         0, i,
                         nXSize, 1,
                         pafThreeLineWin + i * nXSize,
                         nXSize, 1,
                         GDT_Float32,
                         0, 0) != CE_None )
         {
             eErr = CE_Failure;
             goto end;
         }
     }
******************************************************************************


************ What I think would be reasonable  
********************************

     for (i = 0; i < 2 && i < nYSize; i++) {
         if (GDALRasterIO(hSrcBand, GF_Read, 0, i, nXSize, 1,  
pafThreeLineWin + i * nXSize, nXSize, 1,
                          GDT_Float32, 0, 0) != CE_None ) {
             eErr = CE_Failure;
             goto end;
         }
     }
******************************************************************************

7 lines instead of 15, and is it less readable (in a text editor, not in a  
mail client)?

Joaquim

> On 9 May 2016 at 09:15, Ari Jolma <ari.jolma at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 05.05.2016, 01:30, Kurt Schwehr kirjoitti:
>>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> If you've been watching the timeline on trac, you have probably seen a  
>> large
>> number of cleanup CLs from me.  It's definitely past time to get some
>> discussion going on these changes.  If the community likes these, we  
>> can add
>> them to rfc8_devguide.
>>
>>
>> It is very minimal right now. Good style guides tend to be quite large,
>> e.g., https://google.github.io/styleguide/cppguide.html or
>> http://geosoft.no/development/cppstyle.html
>
> Good C++ guidelines that fit on a single page is all you need
> these days, after Bjarne Stroustrup
> https://parasol.tamu.edu/people/bs/622-GP/C++11-style.pdf
>
> Best regards,