Re: change spaces indent in text mode?

[Suvayu Ali <fatkasuvayu+linux@gmail.com>]

On Saturday 06 February 2010 12:21 AM, Jorgen Grahn wrote:
> On Sun, 2010-01-31, Suvayu Ali wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> On Friday 29 January 2010 11:39 AM, Teemu Likonen wrote:
>>> * 2010-01-29 11:28 (-0800), Brendan Miller wrote:
>>>
>>>> When I hit tab in text mode, it indents by 5 spaces. How do I change
>>>> that? Setting tab-width doesn't seem to do the right thing.
>>>
>>> TAB key in text-mode indents to the columns of previous line's words. If
>>> you want to go to next tab stop, as defined in tab-stop-list variable,
>>> use M-i. For example, first write a line like this:
>>>
>>>       Here     are    some                     words.
>>>
>>> Then press TAB key a couple of times on the next line. Then go to the
>>> beginning of line and press M-i a couple of times. You should see the
>>> difference.
>>
>> Maybe this is a little off-topic, but is their anyway to have that
>> behaviour of the TAB key with source code, say C++ or Python? I would
>> like to align various similar consecutive lines to make them easy to
>> read. Thanks for any suggestions.
>
> Do you have any examples where the default Emacs indentation for C++
> and Python isn't readable enough? I'm asking because "align various
> similar consecutive lines" is one of the things those indentation
> modes do already.

I work with a data analysis framework based on C++ libraries
dynamically loaded by various python scripts. It often has code like
this,

Python:
> if rec.doCalo:
>     ## Import CaloCluster Tool
>     from DataQualityTools.DataQualityToolsConf import  DQTCaloClusterTool
>     DQTCaloClusterTool = DQTCaloClusterTool(name            = 'DQTCaloClusterTool',
>                                       histoPathBase         = "/GLOBAL/DQTCaloCluster",
>                                       doRunCosmics          = isCosmics,
>                                       doRunBeam             = isBeam,
>                                       doOfflineHists        = isOffline,
>                                       doOnlineHists         = isOnline
>                                       );
>
>     ToolSvc += DQTCaloClusterTool;
>     ManagedAthenaGlobalMon.AthenaMonTools += [ DQTCaloClusterTool ];

or C++:
> failure = failure | registerHist(fullPathMuons, m_trkeffvsLumi	= new TProfile("m_trk_trkeffvsLumi", "Trk eff per Lumi block", 1000, 0, 1000, 0, 1)).isFailure();
> failure = failure | registerHist(fullPathMuons, m_fwdetatrkeffvsLumi  = new TProfile("m_trk_fwdetatrkeffvsLumi", "Forward Eta eff per Lumi block", 1000, 0, 1000, 0, 1)).isFailure();
> failure = failure | registerHist(fullPathMuons, m_bkwdetatrkeffvsLumi = new TProfile("m_trk_bkwdetatrkeffvsLumi", "Backward Eta eff per Lumi block", 1000, 0, 1000, 0, 1)).isFailure();


As you can see, because of the long and wieldy names, aligning them
with the previous line often helps improve the readability.

> As a source code reader (and maintainer) I appreciate when the
> indentation I see follows one of the built-in styles (and
> indent-widths) so I can edit it without having to manually tweak my
> indentation to keep in style.

Would you do this some other way? Thanks for any suggestions, I 
appreciate it.

> /Jorgen
>
-- 
Suvayu

Open source is the future. It sets us free.