[comp.text.tex] fancy printing software text Re: tgrind, etc

xanthian@saturn.ADS.COM (Metafont Consultant Account) (02/21/90)

In article <1990Feb20.235034.21698@Neon.Stanford.EDU> rokicki@Neon.Stanford.EDU (Tomas G. Rokicki) writes:
[...]
>Make two copies of the same program, one printed with tgrind/WEB/
>whatever, and one just printed out with a monospaced font.  Now try
>and read each.  Which do you really find easier to read?
>
>The rapid font changes (bold keywords, italic identifiers, etc.)
>in the output of such programs as tgrind manage to slow my
>comprehension of the code, by just making it a lot more difficult
>to read.
[...]

Amen.  The same thing makes me hate the forced uppercasing of keywords
in Modula-2.  It may be easier for Wirth to read, but it makes me go
blind.  From my point of view, keywords are punctuation, and should be
as subdued as possible, so I can get right to identifiers, the "value
added" part of the code.  With proper coding style, most keywords are
at the start of a line anyway (including C's "{", "}" pair, sorry
K&R), and the few that aren't are forecast by others that are (for
.... to .. by ... do) so why EMPHASIZE them to the detriment of
readability?
--
xanthian@ads.com xanthian@well.sf.ca.us (Kent Paul Dolan)
Again, my opinions, not the account furnishers'.