Standard indentation?

[Henry Spencer]

In article <1054 at goofy.megatest.UUCP> djones at megatest.UUCP (Dave Jones) writes:
>My suggestion is not to worry about it during the design phase. Let
>people use the style they are most comfortable with.

This ignores two problems:  there are objective differences between styles
(it is *not* all just religion), and mixing styles is thoroughly bad.  At
the very least, maintenance of old code should use the same style as the
old code, and multi-person projects should use a consistent style throughout.

>When it is time to turn a release, run all the sources through a
>standard pretty-printer.

Not a solution in the real world.  Maybe if we had a telepathic pretty-
printer, but we don't.  The programmer can still do a better job of
expressing his intent by doing it himself.  Pretty-printers should be
used as a desperate last resort to make hideous code readable, not as
a routine method of cleaning up after lazy, self-centered programmers.
-- 
SunOSish, adj:  requiring      |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
32-bit bug numbers.            | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry at zoo.toronto.edu