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Date:      Sun, 24 Nov 2002 02:23:53 +0100
From:      Brad Knowles <brad.knowles@skynet.be>
To:        Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com>
Cc:        Brad Knowles <brad.knowles@skynet.be>, John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org>, Jonathon McKitrick <jcm@FreeBSD-uk.eu.org>, freebsd-chat@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Style(9) question
Message-ID:  <a05200f22ba05d9465f9a@[192.168.0.3]>
In-Reply-To: <3DDF241B.FF30ACE2@mindspring.com>
References:  <XFMail.20021122160808.jhb@FreeBSD.org> <a05200f1eba04a864625b@[192.168.0.3]> <3DDF241B.FF30ACE2@mindspring.com>

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At 10:45 PM -0800 2002/11/22, Terry Lambert wrote:

>  That means that they are limited to holding in their head only the
>  maximum amount of data that can be displayed on a screen at a time,
>  so the more non-whitespace data you can display in a limited amount
>  of real-estate, the better.

	I know I cut off the smiley.  I know.

	On the serious side, this isn't a bad argument.  I don't think 
it's as good as "we follow the standard because it is the standard", 
but it's not bad.

	However, I would observe that screens are getting larger, windows 
should be getting larger, and you should be able to have more stuff 
on screen at once.  Indeed, I would argue that perhaps the problem is 
that there is too much stuff on screen at once, and that this has 
been a problem for some time.


	In music, the silences are just as important, if not more 
important, than the notes.  In print publications, proper use of 
white space is just as important as the writing.

	I submit that in coding, less dense spaces caused by things like 
braces can help improve the overall readability of the program, and 
thus the probability of being able to more correctly maintain it.


	Or do you really want single-line programs that comprise tens of 
thousands of kilobytes (or megabytes) of memory?  After all, if the 
goal is to cram everything together onto the smallest number of lines 
possible, we can just remove all whitespace everywhere.

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad.knowles@skynet.be>

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
     -Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania.

GCS/IT d+(-) s:+(++)>: a C++(+++)$ UMBSHI++++$ P+>++ L+ !E W+++(--) N+ !w---
O- M++ V PS++(+++) PE- Y+(++) PGP>+++ t+(+++) 5++(+++) X++(+++) R+(+++)
tv+(+++) b+(++++) DI+(++++) D+(++) G+(++++) e++>++++ h--- r---(+++)* z(+++)

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