Re: Re: Re: Re: Is this book dated?

Marnen Laibow-Koser
Wed, 07 Jul 2010 15:27:58 -0000

You raised a good enough point that I can''t resist one more reply. :)

Michael Pavling wrote:
[...]
>> My goodness, why?
>> I do occasionally write and read long lines of code,
>> and it''s essential to me to not have to lose context by
scrolling
>> horizontally.
>
> For me, I "lose context" when the next "line" is
actually a
> continuation of the previous. Of course, I avoid long lines where
> possible (refactor and rewrite to get rid of them),

Right.  At the same time, if the clearest form of an expression is wider
than my screen, I''m not going to worry too much about rewriting it just
to have short lines.

> but where I come
> across them (for instance looking at a CSV) I want no wrapping! :-)

Ah, now that''s an interesting point.  For CSV, I''d often agree
with you
-- tabular data should probably be presented at full width.  (Though for
quickly viewing a CSV file, I''d be inclined to use a spreadsheet or
something to put it into tabular form, so I probably wouldn''t be doing
much examination of it in a text editor in the first place.)

However, source code feels to me more like running text.  When I''m
reading English text on a Web page, I don''t want my reading flow broken
by scrolling back and forth.  The same is true for me for source code.

In KomodoEdit, we can each choose the word-wrapping setting we like --
it''s a configurable option.  But in NetBeans, I have no choice but to
scroll left and right.  The developers keep promising word wrap in the
next version, and keep breaking their promise (even though it''s a
priority 1 issue on their tracker!).  It''s a frustrating stupidity in
an
otherwise good IDE.

Best,
--
Marnen Laibow-Koser
http://www.marnen.org
marnen-sbuyVjPbboAdnm+yROfE0A@public.gmane.org
--
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.