[Insight-developers] Request for Comment: ITK Style rule that typedefs need to be aligned

[Matt McCormick]

Hi Hans,

I am of the opinion that the alignment makes the code easier to read.
The emphasis may or may not be correct, but my eyes can pass over an
aligned section much quicker and understand than one that is not.

Thanks,
Matt

On Fri, Feb 1, 2013 at 5:36 PM, Johnson, Hans J <hans-johnson at uiowa.edu> wrote:
> Hello ITK community,
>
> I'd like to take a poll about your feelings regarding an ITK style decision
> that has been in place for a very long time.
>
> The ITK style guide states that all typedefs that are on adjacent lines MUST
> be justified the same.  While I think that this is often a good practice,
> this rule also obfuscates the code sometimes, and it makes unnecessary
> changes in code that is unrelated to the line of code in question (for
> example, if an internal type name is renamed to better represent the code,
> the 10 typedefs around that one also need to change).
>
> As a side note, the "Clean Code" book advices against such alignement as it
> emphasizes a relationship between the elements in a column. It should
> instead emphasize the relationship between the elements in a row (when you
> look at those lines, it's usually to know what is the type of the variable
> -> horizontal relationship).
> This also has 2 practical limitations:
> - when the variable type or name are long too long that it reach the number
> of characters per line.
> - adding a new type with a name longer than the existing forces all the
> other rows to be changed, which adds noise into the history.
>
> NOTE:  Making this change in style policy will NOT require any code to be
> changed.  It does allow more flexibility in the future.
>
> ============================
> Please respond to this message so that a historical record of this proposals
> pro's/con's can be recorded on the mailing list.
>
> Thanks,
> Hans
>
>
>
> =================================================================
> Hans J. Johnson, Ph.D.
> Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry
>
> Mailing Address:
> W274 GH                             Email: hans-johnson at uiowa.edu
> 200 Hawkins Drive                   Phone: (319) 353 8587
> The University of Iowa
> Iowa City, IA 52242
>
>
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