Re: Lua Style Guide ?

[Jorge <xxopxe@...>]

On 06/06/17 20:15, Ross Berteig wrote:
> I've had my head stuffed in a book design task (using LuaLaTeX) 
> recently. There really is good rational from book design for shorter 
> line lengths based on studies of readability of running text. Printers 
> (the people who handle lead type and spill ink on things) have known 
> this intuitively about as long as moveable type has existed. The rule 
> of thumb is that lines of print should be perhaps 45 to 75 characters 
> long to avoid tracking to the wrong line as one reads. Mitigating that 
> in code, you have the varying indentation, but generally keeping the 
> ink to 66 characters more or less is likely easier on the reader.

I read code very differently than books, so I don't think that rationale 
translates well. Wen reading book one reads "horizontally", in the sense 
that you don't go to the next line until you've reached the end of the 
current.

In code, there's both horizontal and vertical reading. It's pretty 
common to read a piece of code only reading the first word/few words 
across multiple lines. For example, just reading the names of the 
functions being called, the variables being updated, or how the 
iterators are nested, and only caring about their order and not the 
exact parameters (they're obvious) nor the assigned expressions (you do 
not understand them anyway :)). This kind of "vertical" reading can be 
repeated once and again until I understand what's going on.

So, the vertical structure is at least as important, probably more, as 
the horizontal. I usually will gladly compromise on the horizontal 
legibility for the sake of the vertical one, because I spend a lot of 
time scrolling trough code.