-----Original Message----- From: boost-bounces@lists.boost.org [mailto:boost-bounces@lists.boost.org] On Behalf Of Thomas Witt Sent: Friday, July 15, 2005 8:59 AM To: boost@lists.boost.org Subject: Re: [boost] Macros at namespace scope: trailing semicolon?
Dave Steffen wrote:
I would point out, first, that it probably isn't "a particular" editor, or "some" editor, but probably _most_ or even _all_ editors. I'm a member of the One True Church of Emacs; but I'd bet
that those
heathens^h^h^h^h^h^h^h fine people in the First Unified Church of vi, or any other even fancier IDE, will have the same problems.
There it is again, propaganda. Everybody knows there is _no_ fancier IDE than vi ;-).
Well, I guess I don't belong to any Church then, because I'd rather use a simple plain text editor than either one precisely because they are both underpowered without significant customization by me which would require more of my time than just formatting by hand.
I'd also argue that editor convenience is not an unimportant issue. My code editor is what I look at all day. It's probably what most of us look at all day. Auto indentation and syntax highlighting are not necessary for the preservation of life and limb, freedom, justice, and the pursuit of happiness, but they _do_ go a long way to keeping me happy and sane.
AFAICS the point this discussion revolves around is not whether somebody is wrong or right it's all about how we value these arguments in everyday life.
While I think that on a technical basis Paul is right, I value automatic code indentation much higher than all the arguments in favour of not requiring the semicolon.
But I don't. You can define another macro that that encapsulates the macro and allows you to put the semicolon--a workaround for the editor. I can also write another macro, but in my case, it's a de-workaround. I have to live with the lack of purity that exists because a particular editor that I don't use has trouble automatically formatting it. To me, that's a showstopper, I'd design my own library to solve the problem before reusing the library--even though that might take me a significant amount of time.
As a sidenote I kind of doubt that making there usage looking syntactically diffferent from function calls will educate users about the way they work. To me doing away with the usual "macros are evil" attitude" sounds like a lot more promising approach to me.
You can't do away with that attitude without addressing where the attitude comes from. This is one of those places that derives the attitude. Regards, Paul Mensonides