Dreaming of new generation IDE

[Steve Holden]

bartc wrote:
> 
> "Steve Holden" <steve at holdenweb.com> wrote in message
> news:mailman.1998.1265399766.28905.python-list at python.org...
>> Arnaud Delobelle wrote:
>>> Robert Kern <robert.kern at gmail.com> writes:
>>>
>>>> I prefer Guido's formulation (which, naturally, I can't find a direct
>>>> quote for right now): if you expect that a boolean argument is only
>>>> going to take *literal* True or False, then it should be split into
>>>> two functions.
>>>
>>> So rather than three boolean arguments, would you have eight functions?
>>>
>> If there's genuinely a need for that functionality, yes.
> 
> So you want a function such as drawtext(s, bold=true, italic=false,
> underline=true) to be split into:
> 
> drawtext(s)
> drawtextb(s)
> drawtexti(s)
> drawtextu(s)
> drawtextbi(s)
> drawtextbu(s)
> drawtextiu(s)
> drawtextbiu(s)
> 
The case I was discussing was where the function was required to
implement significantly different logic flow for the two different
values of the Boolean.

> Which of course is going to be fun if the bold/italic/underline values
> are not constants; instead of writing:
> 
> drawtext(s,b,i,u)
> 
> you have to say:
> 
> if b==0 and i==0 and u==0:
>    drawtext(s)
> elif b==1 and i==0 and u==0:
>    drawtextb(s)
> 
> and so on. With half-a-dozen or more booleans, this becomes completely
> impractical.
> 
It's completely impractical the way you've written it anyway, since the
drawtext function shouldn't be required to know whether it's printing
bold, italic, etc. - those properties should be attributes of the font.

regards
 Steve


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