Changed to TECH, since this is clearly not a PIC issue. Roger Weichert wrote: > I've been reading this list on and off for a long time, and I notice > that most requests for help with basic coding problems end up with a > heap of pointed and often rude comments about how badly the code is > presented . When asking 2000 people for a favor, not taking the time to make your question easily readable and presentable is counter productive and also rude. People often dump slop on us that even a grade school teacher would reject on sight. Since making a post presentable is very little work, dumping a mess on us essentially says "I'm so much more important than the rest of you that your hassle in reading my post is of no consequence and I need not bother spend the extra few seconds on my end." This is not a smart thing to say to people you seek a favor from. Then there's also the issue of messy presentation usually is a strong indicator of messy thinking, meaning reasonable amounts of explanation are unlikely to fix anything. > and how the OP should learn how to code properly first. > The chicken and the egg question comes to mind here. You are confusing coding and formatting. Someone new to PICs may get the content wrong, that's what they're asking about after all, but there's no excuse for sloppy formatting. Anyone that can spell "PIC" and can use a mailing list certainly must know how to use a text editor. > In most instances the issue is clearly not the OP's lack of abilty to > lay out their code correctly within their chosen programming editor . I doubt that. > rather the messing up of the formatting at various stages, when > copying and pasting into an email, to be able to ask their questions. That can mess up formatting, but again, anyone that can spell PIC and use a email list knows enough about computers to expect that and how to fix it. The problem is not lack of knowledge, but the "Eh, who cares" attitude. Neatness counts. Think about it, would this same person hand in a assignment looking like that? Of course not. We are different from the professor in that we don't control a grade that goes on the poster's record. In other words, he doesn't have to care as much what we think, and therefore he feels he can get away with less care. > So for those of you who get most offended at the poor formatting of > code examples . is there a procedure for entering our code examples > so they display correctly without losing their formatting . There are very simple guidlines that should be self-evident, but since you asked, the 8 rules of formatting code for public display are: 0 - Never ever ever leave tab characters in the code. I know that whether you leave tabs in your own source or not is a religious issue. Do what you want on your own system. However different systems will display tabbed text differently. There are so many different systems out there with different tab interpretation, many not even controllable by the user, that chances are most people will see your tabbed code quite differently than you see it, and most of those will look like a mess. 1 - See rule 0. 2 - See rule 1. 3 - See rule 2. 4 - See rule 3. 5 - See rule 4. 6 - See rule 5. 7 - Try to avoid long lines. Up to 80 characters is generally safe. Beyond that you get increasing probability that your lines get wrapped or truncated or cause other formatting problems in whatever window they are displayed in. When pasting code snippets into PIClist messages, I often move my standard columns for opcodes, operands, and comments left and shorten the comments a bit for this reason. My ASPIC_FIX program can be useful to fix some kinds of formatting problems. It removes all tab characters and lines up labels, opcodes, operands, and comments in their own columns. It is intended to produce a more readable source code file for further development. You may want to move things to the left a bit to shorten the lines before pasting into a email message. The ASPIC_FIX program is included in the PIC development release at http://www.embedinc.com/pic/dload.htm. ******************************************************************** Embed Inc, Littleton Massachusetts, http://www.embedinc.com/products (978) 742-9014. Gold level PIC consultants since 2000. -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist