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Coding Style

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fred-wang edited this page Apr 29, 2013 · 2 revisions

Coding Style

This is a draft

This document attempts to explain the basic styles and patterns that are used in the MathJax codebase. New code should try to conform to these standards so that it is as easy to maintain as existing code. Of course every rule has an exception, but it's important to know the rules nonetheless!

This is particularly directed at people new to the MathJax codebase, who are in the process of getting their code reviewed. Before getting a review, please read over this document and make sure your code conforms to the recommendations here.

General practices

  • Don't leave debug logging lying around.
  • Use Unix-style carriage returns ("\n") rather than Windows/DOS ones ("\r\n"). You can convert patches with DOS newlines to Unix via the 'dos2unix' utility, or your favorite text editor.
  • Use two spaces for indentation.
  • When fixing a problem, check to see if the problem occurs elsewhere in the same file, and fix it everywhere if possible.
  • End the file with a newline
  • Declare local variables as near to their use as possible.
  • For new files, be sure to use the right license boilerplate (TODO: add a link)

Naming and formatting code

Whitespace

No tabs. No whitespace at the end of a line.

Line length

80 characters or less (for laptop side-by-side diffing and two-window tiling; also for github and hardcopy printing).

Indentation

Two spaces per logic level. No tabs. No whitespace at the end of a line.

Mode line

Files should have Emacs and vim mode line comments as the first two lines of the file, which should set indent-tabs-mode to nil. For new files, use this, specifying two-space indentation:

/* -*- Mode: Javascript; indent-tabs-mode:nil; js-indent-level: 2 -*- */
/* vim: set ts=2 et sw=2 tw=80: */

Control structures

Use K&R bracing style: left brace at end of first line, cuddle else on both sides. Class and function definitions are not control structures; left brace goes by itself on the second line and without extra indentation, in general.

Names

  • use interCaps for names: updateStatusBar.
  • Properties of Jax object should be prefixed by the Jax name. For example HTMLcreateSpan.

Comments

For block comments, leave some empty comment lines above and below:

//
// block
// comments
//

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