[boost] Re: Formal review of "Output Formatters" library begins today

From: David Abrahams (dave_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-09-13 22:33:34

"Paul A Bristow" <pbristow_at_[hidden]> writes:

>  
>
> | -----Original Message-----
> | From: boost-bounces_at_[hidden] 
> | [mailto:boost-bounces_at_[hidden]] On Behalf Of Reece Dunn
> | Sent: 13 September 2004 18:28
> | To: boost_at_[hidden]
> | Subject: RE: [boost] Formal review of "Output Formatters" 
> | library begins today
>
> | >   One thing I would REALLY REALLY like is a Boost 'Standard' way of
> | >colouring and indenting code similar to Visual Studio IDE - 
> | though I don't
> | >feel their colour scheme is quite as good mine!
> | 
> | What do you think about the new Boost.quickdoc? The docs for 
> | quickbook are 
> | available at http://tinyurl.com/64el7, and the source is at 
> | http://tinyurl.com/4tdjj. Thanks to Eric and Joel for this great tool.
>
> I don't like the greyed background to anything.  I don't think it
> helps at all.  

It doesn't; research has shown that black on white communicates most
clearly.

> It makes things take longer to print out if you need
> a paper copy - when the going gets really tough.  Nor do the boxes
> around really help much either, but they at least don't hinder.

Every bit of extraneous visual information hurts readability a little.

> The coloring isn't strong enough for my taste - using blue for keywords is a
> great help in reading,

Y'see, there will always be disagreement on that.  Dark blue keywords
are too strong for me.  I use a slightly more mild purple color.  Oh,
and type names are green ;-)  If you know emacs, these are my
settings (plus defaults):

(set-face-foreground font-lock-builtin-face "red3")
(set-face-foreground font-lock-comment-face "red3")
(set-face-foreground font-lock-constant-face "slateblue")
(set-face-foreground font-lock-string-face "darkgreen")

> The colour scheme chosen by Textpad (my favorite replacement for
> Notepad) - textpad.com for coloring C and C++ seems good -and mine
> only slightly better ;-)
>
> My view is that color is a massive hit in helping people to read code,
> especially if it can be applied uniformly, something that Boost could
> 'impose'.

-- 
Dave Abrahams
Boost Consulting
http://www.boost-consulting.com