A Hard Problem

Probably not a "very hard" problem.

I've put in a bit of thought about the code style switcher - drawn some diagrams and such. The thing which is irking me at the moment is style switches in a revision controlled system.

Inevitably, there are going to be conflicts. Lots of conflicts. You can do nice things like make whitespace not count, but the different styles mentioned earlier don't all become erased in an "all whitespace is the same" world.

So... either you would need better diffing tools, a different means of describing the formatting of code-data, or a revision system that doesn't handle conflicts the same way

the other option is to have everyone "throw away" their repositories overnight, while the code is refactored to a different style, then they all come back and check out new copies. This could work, but it's not really feasible. Just think about how much code Googlers and Microserfs would have to check out, working on Office or Google Docs. Just think about how many little things they'd have going on as personal branches, all the half-finished code. Things that would have to be meticulously gone over and backed up, or lost. This option is nigh impossible for other reasons.

So, better diffing tools, a different means of describing the formatting of code-data (maybe partially compiled semi-object files, which your editor interprets? Oooh let's zoom in on that.

You could build a symbol tree and go through a large glomp of the compilation process but pull in a ton of data about the code itself, and then store those partially-compiled files. Then in your editor, you have specific stylesets which get applied to the code, and you pull the code out of the object file by interpreting it. You want to change styles? Just change styles and click. The program does the best-compile-possible (either takes the old object file and uses that, or compiles yours, or compiles as much of yours as is compilable and leaves chunks out) and then reinterprets the code outward. Oh that's fancy.

I'm taking compilers next semester; this is my new Awesome.