Re: Recommendations for AppleScript Formatting
Re: Recommendations for AppleScript Formatting
- Subject: Re: Recommendations for AppleScript Formatting
- From: Nigel Garvey <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2001 14:22:05 +0100
Chris Espinosa wrote on Tue, 23 Oct 2001 16:24:29 -0700:
>
I recall a discussion on the list some months back about the preferred
>
"modern" settings for AppleScript Formatting on this list a while back.
>
I've looked in the archives and I can't find the thread. A couple of
>
people have asked me recently about better (i.e. colored) defaults for
>
AppleScript formatting; could those of you who have an opinion about
>
this repost (or send me in private mail) your preferences?
I personally find scripts easier to read if they're either monochrome and
monostyled or formatted in the colours and styles I chose for myself when
I first discovered the formatting feature. Presumably this is true for
most people scripting today.
If multicoloured defaults were to be introduced for AppleScript
formatting, it seems likely that subsequent newbies would quickly come to
associate the defaults with the language ideas and adopt them without any
further thought.
A year or two down the line, I foresee a large subculture of
AppleScripters who'll assume that everyone uses the same colours as
themselves and who'll be less wowed by the discovery of customisable
formatting than were we. The effect in the various AppleScript fora will
be advice like: "If you leave out the parentheses, you'll see that the
word 'as' compiles in green instead of red." And later, discussions about
the need for a standard format, like the ones that crop up occasionally
about naming conventions: "Surely the formatting recommended by Apple
should be regarded as standard." "No, not at all. The formatting used on
the AppleScript Sourcebook Web site has been the standard for several
years." And so on.
I move that the default AppleScript formatting remain black, that this or
unstyled text be the standard medium for communicating script ideas to
other people, and that colours and styles remain solely the concern of
the individual user.
NG