From: Sean Middleditch <elanthis@...>
Date: 2002-03-18T02:22:37+09:00
Subject: Re: Mini Rant: Indenting

I think people's editors may be at fault here.  I know if I edit a file
designed for 2 spaces of indent while I use 4, my editor (vim) starts
fricking with everything.

On Sun, 2002-03-17 at 12:14, Thomas Hurst wrote:
> 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?