[vtk-developers] Updates to VTK's coding standard page

[Kyle Lutz]

On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 11:36 AM, Marcus D. Hanwell
<marcus.hanwell at kitware.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> As we were linking to it from the commit guidelines page, I have also
> taken the opportunity to update the coding standards page for VTK,
>
> http://vtk.org/Wiki/VTK_Coding_Standards
>
> This is in line with my understanding of recent discussions, such as
> improvements to wrapping allowing default arguments, using STL in API
> outside of vtkCommon* modules being acceptable, moving toward using
> std::string in API rather that vtkStdString. Comments welcome, or feel
> free to edit/raise concerns here.

Is there any wiki page or public document explaining the rational
behind these conventions?

To be more specific, I don't understand why we insist upon the following:

* "[the STL] should be used sparingly"
* "STL use should use the PIMPL idiom"
* "When using anything declared in iostream, do not use std::"

-kyle