[comp.lang.ada] Uppercase or Lowercase

LINNIG@ti-eg.CSNET (Mike Linnig) (12/23/86)

Folks,

I have been having an ongoing 'battle' for some time over whether it
is better to have Ada keywords (in my Ada source code) in uppercase and user
variables and constants in lowercase or the other way around.  I realize this
takes on the flavor of the 'big-endians' vs. the 'little-endians' battles,
but I'd like to hear some comments.

The most often cited reason for putting keywords in lowercase is that the
Ada LRM does it that way.  The LRM also makes keywords BOLD so that they
stand out.

My question is... 

If the LRM writers did not have bold print available, would they have made
keywords uppercase?

I'd like to hear from any of the folks that worked on writing the LRM.

Personally, I find that uppercase keywords make the structure of the
program more visible (and hence more quickly understandable).

	Mike Linnig,
	Texas Instruments