From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Emanuel Berg Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: tabs, and runoff whitespace (was; Re: replace-regexp, the byte-compiler, docstrings, and suggestions) Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2014 20:14:47 +0100 Organization: Aioe.org NNTP Server Message-ID: <87vbmgz36g.fsf@debian.uxu> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1416078928 16491 80.91.229.3 (15 Nov 2014 19:15:28 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2014 19:15:28 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sat Nov 15 20:15:21 2014 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1XpioZ-0003fl-Iw for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Sat, 15 Nov 2014 20:15:19 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:41723 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1XpioY-0003oI-Uf for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Sat, 15 Nov 2014 14:15:18 -0500 Original-Path: usenet.stanford.edu!news.kjsl.com!feeder.erje.net!eu.feeder.erje.net!news.stack.nl!aioe.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help Original-Lines: 59 Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: feB02bRejf23rfBm51Mt7Q.user.speranza.aioe.org Original-X-Complaints-To: abuse@aioe.org User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.4 (gnu/linux) X-Notice: Filtered by postfilter v. 0.8.2 Cancel-Lock: sha1:pBOYN7GcZ3QnoRChrkmhGtrvZ4M= Mail-Copies-To: never Original-Xref: usenet.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:208658 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:100936 Archived-At: Robert Thorpe writes: > I'm sure you'll soon have to work with others, we > all do. Really? You think so?! <3 ;) > Generally, they wouldn't. But, removing it causes > problems for version-control systems. It marks lines > as being changed, when in reality nothing of > significance was changed. It's best to require > everyone who makes a change to remove extraneous > whitespace. But, once code is in the repository it's > best not to remove extraneous whitespace because it > makes using blame/annotate more difficult. (Git has > a switch to prevent this problem, other systems > don't. Even Git just fake it, it still versions the > change, it just skips past it when presenting data > to the user). Yes, I understood the first time :) > I know one advocate of tabs, I'll explain it the way > he does.... He says that a tab means "indent here". > It doesn't prescribe a particular number of spaces > to indent by. Instead it allows the programmer to > decide how many spaces he wants to see for an > indentation level by configuring his editor. I > disagree with this view, but it isn't obviously > incorrect. No, it is not. > If you read emacs-devel you'll see that Eric Raymond > has converted the Emacs version-control repository > from Bazaar to Git. He's done this using a tool he > wrote called reposurgeon which can make changes to > version-controlled files that don't show up in > version control history. Perhaps the long term > answer is something like this. To fix all the > whitespace in a way that makes the records show it > was never wrong. Cool that the veterans are still around. How about a forth idea: the compiler will somehow determine if the changes in whitespace are "only" cosmetical - "only" within quotation marks because that matters to the programmer, it can matter a lot actually, and if he is happy the way it looks he'll write better code. Not only will the VC program not report changes in whitespace, it won't do anything about it - that way every programmer can have their own indentation! -- underground experts united