{{fbdoc item="title" value="C Header Style Guide"}}----

====About This Guide====
This guide is not a [[http://www.cprogramming.com/tutorial.html#ctutorial C tutorial]] or a [[DevTranslateHeader step by step guide]] for converting headers. This is a style guide which represents the ##ideal## header we would like to maintain. Currently not all of the headers under our control conform to this guide 100%, but work is in progress to do this and all new contributions should attempt to use these standards. 

====General====

	- Translations should be very close to the original, so they look familiar and can be updated easily.
	- Identifiers (including any #defines) should not be changed unless absolutely necessary.
	- Smaller files may be combined into one bigger header, if they would be #included anyways and all belong to the same library.
	- Original license should be retained. 

====Coding style====

	- Headers need to work with the latest ""FreeBASIC"" version.
	- Naming conflicts between multiple identifiers (due to ""FreeBASIC""'s case insensitivity) or an identifier and a ""FreeBASIC"" keyword should be resolved by appending an underscore to one identifier.
	- extern "c" blocks should be used instead of cdecl alias "..." for function declarations or function pointer types.
	- Preprocessor directives (including #defines) should be preserved. Exception: Remove if they serve only to select options for different C compilers, i.e. extern differences, then these can be removed unless they provide support for further code. When choosing compilers the choice should favor GNU C. 
	- ""FreeBASIC"" keywords should be lower-case. 

====Dealing with constructs not supported by ""FreeBASIC""====

	- Inline functions should be converted to a macro if appropriate.
	- Preprocessor directives inside structure declarations, function bodies, or similar may need to be moved outside because in ""FreeBASIC"" they'd be scoped.
	- Declarations spread across multiple lines with preprocessor directives in between them (for example function declarations, or array initializers) will need to be manually rewritten

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