It might be too late, but would it be possible to change the current pointer/ref syntax from double* ptr; to double *ptr?
A lot of code in VTK still follows the C-ism of listing variables at the top of the function, often with multiple declarations per line. This can lead to misleading-looking code such as
vtkIdType* cells, npts, ptId;
which, at a glace, looks like all three variables are pointers, while
vtkIdType *cells, npts, ptId;
is (a bit) clearer. It also looks like discourse’s markdown syntax highlighter handles it better 
Ideally, we’d only declare one var per line and only declare them when they’re needed to keep scopes manageable, but there’s a lot of legacy code that doesn’t follow those practices.