Re: Message Boxes / 5:3 Ratio

[Ole Laursen <olau hardworking dk>]

> > I think this is a bad way of doing it - what if you by accident
> > indent the lines?
> 
> Avoid accidents.  Use proper tools: Emacs or indent.  I'm pretty sure vi
> can do the dirty work for you, too.

Yes, of course. However, I don't think everybody uses such tools. I
sometimes still hear about people who get by with something like the
notepad program for Gnome (Gnotepad? I can't remember the name,
Emacs's got all I need).

>             (_(""
>                "Some text here; normally longer than just 10 characters (...)\n"
>                "More text here sometimes even longer than just 72 characters, maybe 79 (...)\n"
>                "whoops\n"))
> 
> And to obey line length rule people will start to write it this way:
> 
>             (_(""
>                "Some text here; normally longer than just 10 characters (...)\n"
>                "More text here sometimes even longer than just 72 characters,"
>                "maybe 79 (...)\n"
>                "whoops -- it's getting worse.\n"))
> 
> And some brave soul will have to "fix" it:
> 
>             (_(""
>                "Some text here; normally longer than just 10 characters (...)\n"
>                "More text here sometimes even longer than just 72 characters, "
>                "maybe 79 (...)\n"
>                "whoops -- it's getting worse.\n"))
> 
> Yes, this happens ALL the time.  And it's so easy to avoid such a
> mess.

Yes, either be a bit more careful when you're doing that - as you said
yourself: avoid accidents - or simply accept that the code lines get a
little longer. :-)

You still haven't convinced me, but I think it is just a matter of
taste. I don't like it because it goes against the idea that the
spacing and indentation in the code shouldn't matter, you can't for
instance add a comment without consequences.

And of course, most importantly, it ruins the beautiful look of nicely
indented code blocks... ;-)

> E.g., check out the fileutils package and you'll see how to do it
> properly.  Jim Meyering has done a great job the last years!

If I ever encounter the sources, I'll keep that in mind.

> > The compiler will automatically concatenate the strings.
> 
> This is well know to me.

I wasn't sure you knew it, sorry.


I apologize if my previous posting wasn't more polite, I first realize
now that this discussion is religious material.

-- 
Ole Laursen 
http://sunsite.dk/olau/