[webkit-dev] python coding style, PEP-8, and 80-column line widths

[Chris Jerdonek]

I wanted to add a couple comments and a question to this discussion.

On Fri, Apr 16, 2010 at 2:54 PM, Maciej Stachowiak <mjs at apple.com> wrote:
>
> I haven't contributed to WebKit's Python code yet, but I will say that I
> agree with Eric's sentiments here. 80-column limit is archaic and pointless.
> No one is developing WebKit on a vt220.

Note that there are contexts where the limit does come into play that the
user might not have as much control over, for example pasting into the body
of an e-mail or into the comment box in bugs.webkit.org.

Take a look at these two comments for example (which, incidentally, are
about crash logs rather than code):

https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=23558#c4
https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=36707#c1

So non-Python developers know, one argument for treating Python differently
(aside from PEP8) is that the language supports a syntax for continuing
lines to the next line that other languages don't (implied line continuation).

Finally, just to clarify, which parts of PEP8 are we discussing ignoring?
PEP8 has more specific guidelines for docstrings and how they should be
formatted.  For instance, it also contains this guideline in addition to
the blanket 79-character limit:  "For flowing long blocks of text (docstrings
or comments), limiting the length to 72 characters is recommended."

--Chris