Re: [Mxflib-developers] Coding style

[Stuart C. <st...@rd...>]

On Tue, 2004-04-27 at 12:06, Matt Beard wrote:
> Developers,
> 
> Can we try and keep a consistent coding style.  My main two gripes are that 
> we all stick to the "DRAGONS:" tag for any code that needs attention in the 
> (near) future and that we all maintain the doxygen documentation tags.

I, a number of my colleagues and even developers we have met at NAB and
the recent LinuxUser & Developer Expo, have remarked about the use
of "DRAGONS" in the MXFlib source.  Our complaints include:
  "FIXME" and "TODO" are the more conventional and well-known tags
  marking code that needs attention.  Editors such as emacs and gvim
  have specific markup support for these tags.  "FIXME" is described
  in the Jargon File:
    http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/F/FIXME.html

  We have noticed that "DRAGONS" has been used in cases where "TODO"
  is appropriate - i.e. the code works as it is, but there is missing
  functionality, or the code could be optimised with more work.

  For Unix developers "DRAGONS" means a program similar to
  a daemon, such as cron, so its use in comments of source code for
  executables or libraries can be ambiguous.  The Jargon File describes
  this usage of "DRAGONS".

I would suggest we try to make MXFlib appeal to the widest possible set
of developers.  I believe this would mean using conventions used in
the Free Software and Open Source Software communities.  Of course,
coding style can be a matter of religion, but I feel we should try to
appeal to most developers.


Stuart