On Mon, Jun 16, 2003 at 04:10:16PM +0200, Thomas Hood wrote: > Thomas Bushnell wrote: > > No. It is *human*, and focused on actual, real, genuine, human > > preferences. This is far better than trying to find a specific > > technical definition of those preferences: much better instead to use > > the actual standard--that is, whatever format is actually > > preferred--rather than attempt (perhaps badly) to find a technical > > definition of the same thing. > The focus on human preferences tends to end up either in subjective > assessments or in speculation about what other people prefer. > Should these questions be settled by conducting surveys? Absolutely not. It is essential that the preference be the *personal* preference of the person who made modifications to the code (not the person who *wishes* to modify the code; such a one should not have the power to impose his personal preference on the person he got the code from). > "Joe Moore" <joemoore@iegrec.org> wrote: > > Unfortunately, there is a class of tools which do not meaningfully > > change source code, but result in an information-theoretical loss. > > indent(1) is a prime example of this class. Running indent(1) on > > Free Source should not make it non-Source. > In general if you possess both a non-indent(1)ed version of the > program you are distributing and version of the program that you > have run through indent(1), then I want the non-indent(1) ed version. > It is quite possible that the hand-indented version is easier to > read than the version that has been run through indent(1). If > not then I can run indent(1) on it myself; whereas if you give > me the indented(1) version then I can't get the hand-indented > version back. But I should have the right to discard the screwball hand-indented format of the file after I've run indent(1) over it, make my modifications, and distribute the modified work without having to worry about your indenting preferences. The manually indented file may contain additional information, but the only information I see there is "the author of this file has sloppy indenting practices", which I don't find useful to keep around. -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
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