Coding Style Guidelines

When contributing code to the EventGhost project, please follow this style guide to the letter.

General

If not otherwise stated here, PEP 8 and PEP 257 should be followed.

Indentation

Use four spaces and definitely no tabs.

Maximum Line Length

Maximum line length is 79 characters. Longer lines should be wrapped by surrounding expressions in parentheses rather than using \. If you break up parentheses, let every parameter be on a line of its own, indented by one level. The closing bracket should also be on a line of its own, but with the same indentation as the line with the opening bracket. If additional parentheses are inside this construct, break them in the same way if they would otherwise be longer than the maximum line length. An example:

def MyMethodWithManyParameters(
    self,
    parameter1,
    parameter2,
    parameter3,
    parameter4,
    parameter5
):
    if (
        parameter1 is None and
        parameter2 is not None and
        (
            parameter3 == parameter4 or
            parameter3 == parameter5
        )
    ):
        DoMyFunctionWithManyParameters(
            parameter1,
            DoAnotherFunction(
                parameter2,
                parameter3,
                parameter4
            ),
            ShortFunc(parameter2, parameter5),
            parameter5
        )

Even though this looks wasteful and odd in the beginning, it is easier to understand than this example with the same content:

def MyMethodWithManyParameters(self, parameter1, parameter2,  parameter3,
                                                    parameter4, parameter5):
    if parameter1 is None and parameter2 is not None and \
                    (parameter3 == parameter4 or parameter3 == parameter5)):
        DoMyFunctionWithManyParameters(parameter1, DoAnotherFunction(
                parameter2, parameter3, parameter4), ShortFunc(parameter2,
                                                    parameter5), parameter5)

Blank Lines

Use two lines of separating whitespace after class definitions, and no more than one line anywhere else.

Naming Conventions

Since EventGhost relies heavily on wxPython, it uses naming conventions that may be uncommon in the Python world, but are actually quite similar to the ones used in Microsoft’s Win32 API.

Classes, Methods, Functions

For all of these, MixedCase is used (uppercase letter to start with, words run together, each starting with an uppercase letter).

Class Attributes, Function Parameters, Local Variables

For all of these, mixedCaseExceptFirstWord is used (lowercase letter to start with, words run together, each starting with an uppercase letter).

Constants

ALL_CAPS_WITH_UNDERSCORES is used.