Talk:Eiffel (programming language)

/Expanded draft

Archives

/Archive 1

What's wrong with language font conventions?

I see two articles on programming languages with examples using specific fonts in accordance with the respective language conventions (keywords in boldface): Simula and Algol 60. It's not clear why this can't apply to Eiffel as well. Fuchsias 03:18, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

These two examples make use of bold and italics, but neither use any special color. Just a data point. If you'd like to participate in the Quick Poll about this, I'm sure that would be helpful, Fuchsias. LotLE×talk 03:21, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

I understand color is more controversial, but didn't you remove all boldface and italics as well?Fuchsias 03:35, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

One more: Pascal (programming language) uses bold keywords. What's all the fuss about?Fuchsias 03:49, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

I didn't remove any typography at all, at least not in the way Meyer claims. I copied some sections over from the "scratch pad" draft that a few editors used while the article was protected, in order to get my wording improvements back in place (as Meyer requested I do on the talk page!). Nonetheless, what we have now is clearly the "Wikipedia default", so absent some consensus to do otherwise, it's the right thing. FWIW, I thought about how I might automatically add highlighting to code samples should such consensus emerge. I found a keyword list, and the whole thing would take less that 20 lines of code to do automatically. So bellyaching about the huge effort that might be involved in adding highlights is rubbish... I'll write a script in 15 minutes, and run it in 5 seconds. LotLE×talk 04:15, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Just found another example: Algol W uses underlining. More evidence that elsewhere having each language article follow the language's own conventions doesn't seem to have bothered anyone. Fuchsias 03:34, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Note that no-one has contended the use of Eiffel-specific code formatting in the code sample blocks. It is formatting of inline code (code in the article text) that is controversial and inadvisable for many reasons. So the articles you've listed are, unfortunatly beside the point; notice that none of them uses language-idiosyncratic formatting of inlined code. Mikademus 09:16, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Please note the quick poll above: A number of editors have stated a preference against using Eiffel conventions in code blocks, in some cases only against the color convention. But certainly, a larger number of editors dislike inlined code highlighting. LotLE×talk 14:49, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

I meant that during the flurry of Meyer's edits, before the real atagonism arose, no-one was intransigent about colours in the code boxblocks. Mikademus 17:35, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Which, I think, leaves the best compromise position as being that of using font conventions everywhere without use of colour anywhere. This removes the primary complaint with regard to font conventions for inline code - that it becomes confused with Wikilinks, and removes the primary complaint with regard to removal of font conventions - that keywords, variables, etc. referenced inline in the text are clearly referencing code, are more readable, and consistent in style with their reference point in code blocks.

It strikes me that this is an easy solution. Clearly if we can have readability and consistency without creating confusion then we should do that. Leland McInnes 21:05, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

FTR, the Wikipedia manual of style is very clear on the use of color -- namely, don't do it. - Keith D. Tyler ¶ (AMA) 18:34, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

I read the use of color as very clearly stating: "Using color ALONE to convey information (color coding) should not be done. ... It is certainly desirable to use color as an aid for those who can see it, but the information should still be accessible without it." 75.5.175.149 02:34, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Adding boldface to keywords

Here's the 15 lines necessary to highlight all the keywords in the Wikitext:

#!/usr/bin/python
import sys
kws = '''
    alias all and as check class create debug deferred do else
    elseif end ensure expanded export external feature from frozen
    if implies indexing infix inherit inspect invariant is like
    local loop not obsolete old once or prefix redefine rename
    require rescue retry select separate then undefine until
    variant when xor'''.split()
fname = sys.argv[1]
wikitext = open(fname).readlines()
for line in wikitext:
    if line.startswith(' '):
        for kw in kws:
            line = line.replace(" %s" % kw," '''%s'''" % kw)
    print line,

If I have the keywords wrong, let me know to fix it. I'm not really sure what the rule is for where italics go (the article doesn't really say clearly), but presumably if I did it would be easy to add to the simple scaffolding. LotLE×talk 04:44, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Please note that such a script will also only cover codeblocks, and not inline code. There is also, as you note, the issue of italics. Leland McInnes 05:53, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

authors intention not important?

if the author thinks the typesetting is important, why not leave it as such? if you really write code in eiffel, you anyway use an editor and set your style to your own preferences. imo wikipedia tries to give an authentic picture and is not "your personal text editor". one paragraph at the end hinting at that is just blowing up an already long article.

also python uses a special kind of indention ... but contrary to eiffel the python compiler enforces it. currently the article sometimes does not get the indention right - comp. http://se.ethz.ch/~meyer/publications/online/eiffel/basic.html.

is there a place to vote about such things in en.wikipedia.org?

--ThurnerRupert 05:22, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Bold and italic font conventions

I think we have, at this point, at least a rough consensus for bold and italic Eiffel font conventions to be used throughout the article (inline, and in codeblocks). Colour, whether restricted to codeblocks or not, seems to still be somewhat cntroversial, so let's leave that aside for now. Barring no further complaints in response to this I will, sometime in the next week or so, try and go through the article and apply bold/italic font conventions wherever appropriate. Leland McInnes 05:47, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

i tried to re-order the poll and separate out a vote for code block, and for inline code.

it seems to be a clear vote for eiffel standard with color in code blocks.

for inline code i do not know how to interpret the vote. it seems quite even for all three options. if we take away the color then wikipedia style looses. --ThurnerRupert 22:02, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

No, there's not. The way things work is that the editor with the most time (or sockpuppet friends) wins. If you don't like it, fork Wikipedia; it's Free. 128.135.99.80 23:05, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Font conventions (again)

Another possible approach to handlign syntax conventions has become available. Wikipedia now supports GeSHi[1], which provides automated syntax highlighting by use of <syntaxhighlight> tags. This would eliminate the need to include formatting markup in the text of the page itself (which can be a little cumbersome). A downside is that the current support for syntax highlighting of Eiffel (yes, it has Eiffel support already) doesn't perfectly conform to the current syntax presentation guidelines:

For example we would get the following

   class 
       HELLO_WORLD
   create
       make
   feature
       make
         do
            io.put_string ("Hello, world!")
            io.put_new_line
         end
   end

However, if we were to convert the page to using GeSHi <syntaxhighlight> tags then we could move the convention issues over to fixing Eiffel syntax highlighting in GeSHi (there are, apparently, files for each language which can be changed) and not have to mess with markup on this page anymore -- it would all propogate automatically. Thoughts? -- Leland McInnes 20:11, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

I like this proposal. GeSHi seems to use CSS so it's reasonable to think users could pick how they want to view the code. For instance, I could imagine little buttons on every source snippet that would switch between formatted and unformatted views. Regardless, with GeSHi support, I think these <syntaxhighlight> tags are likely to become the standard way to present code, so this article should probably conform for that reason. --Doradus 03:07, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

It is done. Certainyl it makes maintainability of code samples much easier. It also has the bonus of actually taggin code as Eiffel code specifically. Unfortunately it doesn't work fo inline code. -- Leland McInnes 06:39, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Why wouldn't it work for inline code? --Doradus 21:55, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Because GeSHi automatically renders into blocks, so putting <syntaxhighlight> tags on inline code only results in it no longer being inline. -- Leland McInnes 02:42, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Nice to see the article has recovered from its brief bout of blue-font insanity. I think the way it's done now, with a "style conventions" section, is just right. --Doradus 21:54, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

there was a clear vote on how it should like, and the inventors proposal was voted for. i'd suggest you change your stylesheet so it conforms to the original, or you change it back to without stylesheet and it looks again like the original. --83.215.194.249 00:13, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

I would be happy if the GeSHi Eiffel stylesheet could be cleaned up to conform. It's actually reasonably close already (compare, for example, to code on the open source EiffelStudio wiki [2][3]). That, however, is in the hands of whoever maintains GeSHi for Wikipedia -- I really would not know how to make the change as an ordinary user. Ultimately this is the best solution, it just has pending stylesheet changes to be dealt with. -- Leland McInnes 02:42, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

It seems to be at MediaWiki:Geshi.css, so make whatever change you want. --Doradus 11:57, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

That is what I suggested to do 4 years later, although the format has an inline option class HELLO_WORLD create make feature ... if that makes sense.

I don't know if you already had noticed that. This discussion is so long that I forgot what other point I wanted to write about.

No instructions, advice, or how-to

I removed Thumperward's "how-to" marker, as I do not see where it applies. Please provide a specific example or more detailed critizism. Thanks. --Schoelle (talk) 15:42, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

When appeared?

Infobox says 1986; text says "Since 1985, many suppliers have developed Eiffel programming environments". Any better sources? 192.12.12.178 (talk) 02:24, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

 Added a reference in the info block to the web page mentioning the history of the language. Alexander (Sasha) (talk) 09:06, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

Introductory sentences are promotional, not NPOV

The introductory paragraph reads like marketing copy.. Since efficient development, reliability, and extensibility are generally considered virtues, and object-oriented programming is widely seen as a road to these qualities, all this introduction says is that Eiffel is designed to be a good object-oriented language. The way the first paragraph reads now, it seems to say, "Eiffel is designed to get object oriented languages right, which is demonstrated by its use in academia and in all of these different applications, and you even have a wide choice of tools to use!" It is only in the second paragraph that the article gets around to discussing the specific principles that distinguish Eiffel from other languages.

The introduction should describe what makes Eiffel objectively different, and anything that is said about how good it is needs to be backed up by citations to published and peer-reviewed studies that demonstrate using Eiffel leads to measurably better results than using some other specific choices that could be made. Only then are such statements NPOV. What we have here instead sounds like bandwagon marketing tactics don't cut it (ironic, since according to Tiobe Software's Programming Community Index, Eiffel is not even in the top 50 programming languages).

popularity is not a way to judge the good quality of a language. Many OO languages are very bad designed. Eiffel, was designed with a more formally rigorous approach, I don't care if the majority of programmers ignore what a precondition is, preferring languages more easy to learn for the laymen, those with no types, and a lot of traps to fall.

Eiffel has a good design because it gives no rope to programmer for hanging himself. And has features which were added just recently to those more popular OO languages, which I wont mention to avoid a religious discussion with their fans.

I hate OO languages because they distorted many concepts. For example, encapsulation, in many OO languages the objects are parametrized changing internal constants. That violate the information hiding principle.

Nevertheless, I am interested to learn about Eiffel, because contrary to many of the other OO counterparts, seems a well designed language, Because it is designed for good software engineering practices, like design by contract. It is not in the top list of popularity, but had positively influenced both other programming languages and the programming practice.

It may sound publicity to you, but it is not. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2806:106E:B:EB8A:5812:FFA3:1BF4:BDDD (talk) 03:34, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

Unless there are objections which need to be worked through, I will soon rewrite the first sentence to "Eiffel is an ISO-standardized, general-purpose object-oriented programming language," move the rest of the paragraph to the end of the section into a paragraph just above the contents, and continue the first paragraph with the second paragraph. --—C. V. Hyphus\^talk 04:16, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

 Lead reworked --Cybercobra (talk) 05:28, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Missing File Extension

Can someone who knows Eiffel add the file extension used by its components. Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.209.111.39 (talk) 22:49, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

 Added the file extension to the language template block. Alexander (Sasha) (talk) 08:48, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Eiffel (programming language). Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20040604193933/http://cetus-links.org/oo_eiffel.html to http://www.cetus-links.org/oo_eiffel.html

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

• If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
• If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 10:58, 18 September 2017 (UTC)