Guiding principles and rationale
When deciding on style guidelines, the style team follows these guiding principles (in rough priority order):
-
readability
- scan-ability
- avoiding misleading formatting
- accessibility - readable and editable by users using the widest variety of hardware, including non-visual accessibility interfaces
- readability of code in contexts without syntax highlighting or IDE assistance, such as rustc error messages, diffs, grep, and other plain-text contexts
-
aesthetics
- sense of 'beauty'
- consistent with other languages/tools
-
specifics
- compatibility with version control practices - preserving diffs, merge-friendliness, etc.
- preventing rightward drift
- minimising vertical space
-
application
- ease of manual application
- ease of implementation (in
rustfmt
, and in other tools/editors/code generators) - internal consistency
- simplicity of formatting rules