Revisiting naming conventions

[Ross Whitaker]

******************

The question:

"The STL naming convention is different from ours.  Should we adopt it instead?"

******************

My first thoughts:

Suppose we do.  Then suppose we adopt yet another external library---such as a matrix library.  Suppose
it has another naming convention.  Do we adopt it?   What if they conflict?  Then it's impossible.

It seems we should either:

    1)  Live with different naming conventions for borrowed libraries.
    2)  Subclass heavily used libraries/objects and make them use our naming convention.

The first one seems cleaner/easier.

Regards,

Ross

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"Miller, James V (CRD)" wrote:

> At the January meeting, we decided on a coding style where class names were prefixed with itk and
> used word capitalization, i.e. our classes are named itkImage, itkImageBase, etc.
>
> To support smart pointers, each class has an internal typedef named "Pointer".  So to declare a
> smartpointer to an itkImage you would use itkImage::Pointer.
>
> To support generic programming and the user of iterators, the image class has typedefs
> itkImage::Iterator, itkImage::Index and itkImage::PixelType.
>
> We are using two external "packages", STL and a numerics package, that use a different nomenclature.
> These packages use lower case class names and underscores.  For instance, the stl vector class has a
> typedef vector::interator and vector::value_type and vector::reference_type and vector::pointer.
>
> Therefore, itk's public interface uses one naming convention; however, under the hood, we reference
> systems that have a very different naming convention.
>
> Should we consider adopting the naming conventions of STL and the numerics package for consistency
> sake?
>
> There are two arguments on the table.
>
> 1. Using our original planned naming convention, it will be very clear what is itk code and what is
> STL/numerics code.
>
> 2. Using a consistent naming convention will allow people who already know STL to get up to speed on
> itk quickly (and they will not have to remap STL/itk bindings).
>
> If we adopt STL conventions, how far should we take it? i.e. should our classnames take the form of
> itk_image instead of itkImage?
>
> We have a small enough code base now, that we can change our conventions easily.  If we wait too much
> longer, it will become VERY painful to switch.
>
> What are people's opinions on adopting the STL naming convention (which is part of the ANSI
> standard).
>
> Jim Miller
> _____________________________________
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>
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