I cited it in Post 61 of this thread: the July end-of-month rant, with its reference to the etherial Voynich Manuscript, an illuminated parchment now housed in Yale’s Beinecke Library. The work hints of a deep and wonderful intelligence, but factually conveys nothing — because no one can read it. “Clarity matters” I thundered from the bully pulpit, forefinger circling above my head. Hopefully the spittle didn’t too much dampen occupants of the front-row cheap seats. Showers aside, allusions to certain gmic-community artifacts which may score high on some notional Voynich scale shimmer in the wings. One may take that as far as one will; G’MIC’s acceptance on wider stages stems from how well its code may be read by unprompted strangers.
Those of us who habitually ascend bully pulpits are regularly confronted with examples of preaching that falls short of practice. Lapses in Quality Assurance I consciously avoid but unconsciously commit may be found as recently as in the Post 66 seekbetter.gmic inclusion, where tab characters riotously played hob with indentation. There is no telling how a local text rendering facility will expand TAB characters. Four spaces? Eight? Some number in between? In any case, the author’s intent is obscured.
In the sweet fullness of time, How to write clean G’MIC code? ought to be elevated to some station in the tutorial universe. It’s a good read, but more than a good read, it is a good practice. I’d even go so far as to advance Python’s PEP-8 as auxiliary reading to that post, sacrilege though that may be. The low PEP number is evidence of that community’s early commitment to readability, weaved into their ethic for over twenty one years now, and still it endures — and in a most practical way. Perhaps the maintenance of contributions from now-absent members could be a bit more tractable had an appreciation of the needs of unprompted strangers been a more ingrained part of our culture back in similar, antediluvian times.