Re: Commenting out code in lisp

Stephen> Shouldn't this discussion be on xemacs-beta? I agree. APA> For 1: APA> comment-region without prefix argument should default to prefix APA> argument of 3 in lisp modes or bind comment-start to ";;;". Stephen> I find triply commented code hard to mesh with the Stephen> surrounding code, unless it's the whole function. I should have made my intent clearer. My concern is about code which gets commented out quickly in a block because that code doesn't work in XEmacs, is no longer needed, etc. Some people do this using comment-region. By default, the region will get commented with single ;. The next guy changing the file and re-indenting that function will see this comment block jump to comment-column. This makes lines excessively long and, more importantly, C-u comment-region can no longer uncomment that block. Using double-semicolon will set up the same re-indentation trap and make uncomment-region impossible. If my proposal to comment broken or unneeded blocks of code (if they shouldn't be deleted alltogether) by triple semicolon makes sense, then we should make it the dafault. Few people will actually use C-3 comment-region to do this. Stephen> I prefer to comment with double semicolons, which Stephen> indicates the nesting depth of the commented code. I like this commenting style to document tricky pieces of code. End-of-line comments I don't like much, because it brings up all these line-up and filling issues. This will still leave us with indentation issues when merging or changing externally maintained code. However, re-indenting XEmacs core lisp files (unless otherwise noted explicitely) should be harmless and desirable. I want to actually take advantage of the great auto-indent feature of XEmacs! Whenever I feel an urge for manual indentation I'll fire up MS Visual Studio -> MS Visual Basic. :-) What does everybody think about this issue? Best regards, Adrian Stephen> Highly personal of course, and I don't feel that strongly Stephen> about it. (I rarely use comment-region.) Stephen> -- Stephen> University of Tsukuba Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN Stephen> Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences Tel/fax: +81 (298) 53-5091 Stephen> _________________ _________________ _________________ _________________ Stephen> What are those straight lines for? "XEmacs rules." -- Adrian Aichner mailto:adrian＠xemacs.org http://www.xemacs.org