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From: Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org>
Cc: ats@acm.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org
Subject: Re: ChangeLog fontifications
Date: Thu, 13 May 2004 17:56:23 -0400	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20040513215623.GA14133@fencepost> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20040513.233755.258207743.wl@gnu.org>

On Thu, May 13, 2004 at 11:37:55PM +0200, Werner LEMBERG wrote:
> This ChangeLog style is a typographic nightmare IMHO.

On the contrary, it looks quite nice.  IMO.

In fact I find it more readable than the `traditional' format, as it provides
the same advantage for the human reader that it does for a parser: it makes
the type of a line obviously identifiable by looking for a token in the left
margin, where it's very easy to see.

[The alternative format you suggest, `(a)(b)(c)' does not provide any real
advantage for the reader -- embedded ") (" pairs are in fact _harder_ to
parse for a human than commas because they're busier, and less familiar.]

> What on earth was the reason to invent such a convention?

Because (1) it's more friendly to line-oriented parsers (like font-lock, but
also external tools [*]), and (2) it looks quite nice.

[*] Indeed, rather _more_ important for external tools, because many unix
scripting languages &c are quite line-oriented, more so that emacs is.

-Miles
-- 
Somebody has to do something, and it's just incredibly pathetic that it
has to be us.  -- Jerry Garcia

  reply	other threads:[~2004-05-13 21:56 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 41+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2004-05-13 18:50 ChangeLog fontifications Bruno Haible
2004-05-13 19:26 ` Miles Bader
2004-05-13 19:43   ` Bruno Haible
2004-05-13 20:38     ` Miles Bader
2004-05-13 21:12       ` Sam Steingold
2004-05-13 21:15         ` Miles Bader
2004-05-13 20:13 ` Alan Shutko
2004-05-13 20:42   ` Miles Bader
2004-05-13 21:37   ` Werner LEMBERG
2004-05-13 21:56     ` Miles Bader [this message]
2004-05-13 22:25       ` Stefan Monnier
2004-05-14  3:00       ` Karl Eichwalder
2004-05-14  4:24         ` Miles Bader
2004-05-14 13:56         ` Robert J. Chassell
2004-05-14  6:24       ` Werner LEMBERG
2004-05-14  6:36         ` Werner LEMBERG
2004-05-14 15:31       ` Sam Steingold
2004-05-14 21:02 ` Richard Stallman
2004-05-16 15:14   ` Bruno Haible
2004-05-16 16:52     ` Eli Zaretskii
2004-05-16 20:52       ` Miles Bader
2004-05-17 22:57     ` Richard Stallman
2004-05-18  5:02       ` Karl Eichwalder
2004-05-19  1:32         ` Miles Bader
2004-05-19 13:08           ` Sam Steingold
2004-05-19 13:22             ` Miles Bader
2004-05-19 14:59               ` Stefan Monnier
2004-05-19 13:45         ` Richard Stallman
  -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2004-05-11 17:15 Sam Steingold
2004-05-11 18:03 ` Juri Linkov
2004-05-11 22:54   ` Sam Steingold
2004-05-11 23:02     ` Miles Bader
2004-05-12  8:33       ` Werner LEMBERG
2004-05-12 10:10         ` Miles Bader
2004-05-12 12:36           ` Eli Zaretskii
2004-05-13 17:22           ` Sam Steingold
2004-05-14 21:01             ` Richard Stallman
2004-05-11 23:26     ` Stefan Monnier
2004-05-12  0:08       ` Juri Linkov
2004-05-12  5:48         ` Eli Zaretskii
2004-05-12 12:55           ` Stefan Monnier

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