From: Thomas Hurst <tom.hurst@...>
Date: 2002-03-18T02:14:47+09:00
Subject: Mini Rant: Indenting

Why is it that I see *so* much code like:

(uri/generic.rb)
  if USERINFO !~ v
��������raise InvalidComponentError,
��������  "bad component(expected userinfo component or
    user component): #{v}"
  end

(note the highlighted tabs, and how my ts of 8 interferes with the
original programmer's ts of 4, and indent level of 2)

If you *must* use spaces to indent, can you please *stick* to using
spaces to indent and not turn your code into a disgusing mishmash of
tabs and spaces;  this really is the worst of both worlds because you
end up with spaces that don't adapt to your prefered tabstop and tabs
that do but shouldn't.

I jokingly call this the GNU indent method, because pretty much all the
GNU source I've seen is like this.

Go ahead; look at most source on your system and change your tabstop;
most of it will completely screw up :(

Solutions:

 1. Use spaces ONLY; if at all possible, completely turn them off in
    your editor.  If you believe all the stuff about how it makes your
    code easier to read, you DON'T want a tab in there, because that
    will be utterly counter to your reasons for using spaces in the
    first place.

    This will render your maintainer's tabstop completely castrated,
    which aside from pissing him off, at least won't cause your code to
    look like it's been ran through a meat grinder.

 2. Use tabs ONLY; use them for indenting at the left of the expression,
    and at the right ONLY where they're needed to line things up because
    of different indent levels.

    This will give the control of indent level back to the editor; you
    can decide to switch from a ts of 4 to 8 and your code will follow
    suit automatically and without anyone else noticing.

Pick one or the other; and do it properly.  Really, it's not hard and
makes code so much neater for other users to look at.

Turning on whitespace highlighting is a good move for doing either of
these right; in vim, something like:

set listchars=tab:��,trail:�
highlight NonText ctermfg=blue
set list

Should do.  It shows tabs as ����� and trailing whitespace as �,
highlighted blue.

-- 
Thomas 'Freaky' Hurst  -  freaky@aagh.net  -  http://www.aagh.net/
-
Hi Jimbo.  Dennis.  Really appreciate the help on the income tax.
You wanna help on the audit now?