[REBOL] Re: One-Liners back in town!
From: atruter:labyrinth:au at: 24-Nov-2002 13:30
Hi to everyone on this thread. Great to see the discussion it is
generating. A couple of thoughts (just opinion, so feel free to disagree ;)
)
>> save/png %hello.png to-image layout [banner "Hello World!"] view layout
>> [image %hello.png]
I believe the above, while a functional improvement over the original, is
in fact two seperate "things" with the first being "create a png image",
then, "display a png image". My philosphy with these one-liners would be to
keep them as simple as possible from both a syntactic and functional point
of view. I believe that:
; Create a PNG image
save/png %hello.png to-image layout [banner "Hello World!"]
is:
1) Easy to read and understand, even for non-REBOL gurus
2) Has one clear and unambiguous purpose / function
3) Uses the simplest / clearest syntax to achieve 2)
4) Does not try to artificially squeeze multiple lines into one
To me:
save/png %hello.png to-image layout [banner "Hello World!"] view layout
[image %hello.png]
is just:
; Create a PNG image
save/png %hello.png to-image layout [banner "Hello World!"]
; Display a PNG image
view layout [image %hello.png]
with the comments and line breaks removed.
view layout [image (img: to-image layout [banner "Hello World!"])]
may "do more" in a single line, but could cause confusion. At the very
least someone could ask, "Isn't that just a more complex way of doing"
view layout [banner "Hello World!"]
Looking at the "clock" one-liner
view layout[origin 0 t: h1 87 rate 1 feel[engage: [t/text: now/time show
t]]]
I would be tempted to rip out everything not required to display the time
(it's intended purpose) and replace the 87 with "00:00:00" to both pre-
allocate the required size and avoid confusion (someone new to REBOL might
ask, "What is that 87 and how was it derived", while the "00:00:00"
(especially given it is in quotes) is I believe a bit more intuitive. I
would also be loath to remove spaces between words and opening blocks (like
layout[
) as it makes the code look congested and it differs from REBOL
source snippets presented elsewhere. My [minor] rewrite of the above would
look like:
view layout [t: h1 "00:00:00" rate 1 feel [engage: [t/text: now/time show
t]]]
coming in at 78 chars. Again, this is just my opinion and no offense is
intended to any of the authors of any of the above. ;)
Regards,
Ashley
