Re: Electric indentation (Was: Re: js.el changes)

[Daniel Colascione <danc@merrillprint.com>]

On Friday 21 August 2009, you wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 6:28 PM, Daniel Colascione<danc@merrillprint.com> wrote:
> > On Friday 21 August 2009, you wrote:
> >> Maybe it could be done similar to indent-line-function etc?
> >
> > Err, how do you mean? Different electric keys require different behavior in different modes. One variable can't be used to dispatch to all these various pieces of code. You could have electric-indentation-mode call a mode-specific function that decides what to do with a given electric key, but isn't that just reimplementating the keymap mechanism?
> 
> 
> It allows you to have a minor mode to toggle the behaviour.

I feel like we're talking past each other. Right now, a mode like js-mode or cc-mode binds keys that are supposed to be electric to a mode-specific function. Let's use cc-mode as an example: it binds { to c-electric-brace. c-electric-brace runs self-insert-command and checks whether the variable c-electric-flag is true. If it is, it performs some specific indentation operations.

My proposal is to create a new globalized minor mode called electric-indentation-mode. An electric insert function like c-electric-brace, instead of checking a mode-specific flag, would instead check the value of the variable electric-indentation-mode. That way, the user can use one interface to enable or disable electric indentation for all supported modes at once.