[josm-dev] Source code formatting template?

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

> 1. Indentation: space vs. tab

I'd go for spaces always.

> 2. Maximum line length:
> A large number of files do contain very lengthy lines, mostly for 
> defining strings with display messages. Other files use a maximum line 
> length of ap. 100-140 characters (which is my favorite setting, too). 
> Files with a max. line length of 80 characters are very rare.

Generally I'd avoid long lines but we must take care not to make life 
difficult for translators. Does it pose a problem for translation if
one says

tr("some " + "long " + "message")

instead of

tr("some long message")

or is that un-problematic? I am not familiar with the translation 
mechanism and don't know whether it has a full parser or relies on 
everything being one string. Dirk probably knows?

> 1. JavaDoc sections: the formatter compacts this sections and removes 
> line breaks and alignment spaces which is unfamiliar at a first glance, 
> but IMHO it is not bad as it shows how the JavaDoc comment will look 
> like in the generated HTML-JavaDoc.

It is more important for us to have good and readable comments in the 
code than generated HTML Javadoc. Nobody (as far as I am aware) uses 
Javadoc with JOSM. Of course it would be good to have all, but faced 
with a choice I'd opt for good and readable comments instead of good and 
readable Javadoc ;-)

If possible I would say the comments should not be touched by auto 
formatting.

> 2. Spaces before and after operations: = < > + - * /

We normally have them. We also have spaces before ( and after ) but not 
after ( and before ) but sometimes, in a complex expression, you'll 
perhaps even want those extra spaces...

Bye
Frederik