PEP8 needs revision

Random832 random832 at fastmail.com
Wed Jun 15 15:39:35 EDT 2016


On Wed, Jun 15, 2016, at 15:18, Kyle Thomas wrote:
> To Whom It May Concern,
> Knuth's quote refers to the output of TeX, the programming language he
> authored. The quote cannot be interpreted to speak about formatting of
> source-code. 

It speaks about what is more readable, and is mentioned in the context
of a general discussion of readability.

> One bit of evidence I can offer is that TeX's source only
> cares about multiple newlines in considering the multiplicity of
> whitespace. This means that Knuth's quote likely has little or no bearing
> on the format of source-code.

Yes but we're not talking about source code as computer code (Python's
source doesn't care about whitespace within parenthesized expressions at
all), we're talking about source code as human-readable information.
Looking to other traditions of displaying human-readable information
(mathematical typesetting traditions as described by Knuth) is entirely
valid.

He made that choice, one assumes, because it's what Mathematicians
expect and like to see in their papers, and they want that because it is
more readable.



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