On 9/3/12 4:16 AM, John Reid wrote:
> Ian Chivers wrote:
>> Springer have made a big move into electronic
>> book production.
>>
>> Here is their web page
>>
>> http://www.springer.com/librarians/e-content/ebooks?SGWID=0-40791-0-0-0
>>
>> and they have over 51,000 already available
>> with over 7,000 a year in production.
>>
>> With the move to things like the Kindle
>> Jane Sleightholme and I wondered what people thought
>> of the small 'page' size.
>>
>> From a program language teaching and training point of view
>> something based on an A4 or letter page size
>> means that you can lay programs out relatively
>> easily. You don't have to use continuation lines
>> very often with this page size.
>>
>> When targetting a conventional book page size
>> you now have to reformat programs for a
>> relatively short line length
>> to maintain correct program language syntax.
>>
>> The Kindle and similar devices means a
>> very short line length.
>>
>> What do people think about this?
>> Does it matter if the programs are
>> no longer syntactically correct due
>> to the short line length?
>
> Yes. Use the &. That is what it is for.
Well, I would argue that & is primarily for statements that are longer
than the permitted line length specified in the standard, and not for
Kindle displays. It would work, of course, though if your program has a
variable of derived type with a name of 30 characters, and components
with similarly long names, chopping the code into short lines will
result in an unreadable mess. (I know, one could argue that using
30-character names already makes code hard to read, but that's a
different discussion.)
I would suggest alternatives such as limiting indentation to 2-3
characters, or just using a smaller font.
Also, you seem to be targeting the worst case. People regularly read
10-007r1.pdf on iPads without reformatting. Give that Apple has most of
the tablet market, you might just draw the line and say that (or similar
sized tablets) is the only supported display platform.
Cheers,
Bill
>
> John Reid.
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