Coding Standards for Marble =========================== This file contains the coding standards for Marble. If you want to add or change code in Marble, you must follow these standards. Foundation ---------- The foundation for these standards is the kdelibs coding style. It is described here: http://techbase.kde.org/Policies/Kdelibs_Coding_Style I suggest that you start by reading that document, it's not long. Recapitulation -------------- Let's recapitulate a few key points from the kdelibs coding style. This is not the full standard, but just the most important points. - 4 spaces indentation - no tabs in the source code - opening braces at end of line (except struct, class, functions and namespaces) - as little abbreviation in variable names as possible - one variable declaration per line - whitespace after control statements - no space after pointer or reference ('*foo', not '* foo') - no lines longer than 100 chars. That's a very short recapitulation of the above mentioned document. The full document contains lots of examples to show how it should be done. Class names and Variables ------------------------- - Class names should have the ("namespace") prefix "Marble" if * they are parts of the Marble library that get exported. * they resemble widgets or similar visually exposed items The remaining part of the name should reflect the purpose of the class and should be camel cased with the first letter being upper cased. All other classes should not have the "Marble" prefix. - camelCasing with the first letter being lower cased should be used for methods and variables (e.g. myMethodName()). Full upper cased names should be used for constants (e.g. RAD2DEG). Extensions ---------- The style defined above is not complete, so we have added the following item: Broken Lines in Expressions - - - - - - - - - - - - - - If an expression is so long that the line has to be broken, the break should occur *in front of* an operator, not *behind* it. Example: var = very_long_sub_expression + another_very_long_sub_expression; If you use emacs, you can make it auto-indent by adding parenthesis to the expression like this: var = ( very_long_sub_expression + another_very_long_sub_expression ); Another common case for this is logical expressions for if statements: if ( very_long_sub_expression && another_very_long_sub_expression ) doSomething(); See also below for how to handle braces in this case. Exceptions ---------- The Marble coding style has a couple of exceptions to the foundation. Spaces and Parenthesis - - - - - - - - - - - Due to historic reasons, the coding style of Marble havs one exception to the kdelibs style. That exception is that we use the Qt way of using parenthesis, with a space inside both opening and closing parenthesis. For example Correct: if ( width > 100 ) { setHeight( 200 ); } Wrong: if (width > 100) { setHeight(200); } Braces After Multi-line Expressions - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - When an 'if' or 'while' statement has a long logical expression, the following braces should be put at the beginning of the next line to increase readability. Correct: if ( very_long_sub_expression && another_very_long_sub_expression ) { doSomething(); doSomethingElse(); } Wrong: if ( very_long_sub_expression && another_very_long_sub_expression ) { doSomething(); doSomethingElse(); } As you can see, it is somewhat difficult to spot where the expression ends and the action part begins if you just look at the left side. Special considerations for Marble --------------------------------- Some things are only applicable for Marble. Abbreviations - - - - - - - Use the following abbreviations in variable names and comments: lon longitude (not lng!) lat latitude As parameters (and preferably in other places as well) longitude and latitude should appear in lon-lat order (not lat-lon!). Settings for Your Editor ------------------------ emacs - - - If you are an emacs user, you can put the following lines in your .emacs file. Then these style guielines will be followed almost automatically: ;; Don't use tabs in indentation (setq-default indent-tabs-mode nil) ;; Use 4 space indentation (setq-default c-basic-offset 4) kate - - Under "Settings -> Configure Kate" adjust following parameters: - Check "Insert spaces instead of tabulators" on "Editing" page - Set "Tab width" to 4 on "Editing" page - Set "Encoding" to "Unicode ( utf-8 )" on "Open/Save" page - Set "End of line" to "Unix" on "Open/Save" page vim - - If you are a vim user, add the following to your ~/.vimrc file. :set cindent :set tabstop=4 :set shiftwidth=4 :set expandtab