[MERGE] (0.17) reworked LogFormatter API

[Robert Collins]

On Thu, 2007-05-24 at 20:56 +0800, Kent Gibson wrote:
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> 
> >
> > The fact that John misread it your way suggests it doesn't read
> > very well ;)
> >
> > FWIW, I also find "getattr(lf, 'log_revision', None) is None" over
> > "not ..." to be slightly clearer.  Negations tend to be confusing
> > for humans.
> They are not.

I'm presuming that was a joke :). In case it was a serious statement,
I'd like to point out that different languages and cultures use
negations in different contexts. For instance in Brazilian "Não vejo
nada", literally "no I-see nothing" translates as "I can't see
anything." Encountering a negative where one does not expect one
increases the chance of mis-parsing a statement, even though that
negative may be colloquially correct for some readers of the code it is
unlikely to be correct for all readers of the code. 

Code is usually read much more often than it is written, so we should
strive to optimise the experience of the reader.

-Rob

-- 
GPG key available at: <http://www.robertcollins.net/keys.txt>.
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