[Geany-Devel] Some Auto-Indentation Ideas

[Lex Trotman]

On 15 March 2013 08:30, Braden Walters <meoblast at aol.com> wrote:
> As a reply to everyone:
>
> I now see what Thomas Martitz wrote, and I'm surprised I overlooked the
> newline strip whitespace option. This will help me out a bit, but I also
> understand Roger Booth's comments about indentation in virtual space.
> Although, in the code I work with at least, it's rare that I would notice a
> difference between the existing newline strip option and that, but I
> definitely think it'd be useful. If you do decide to make that a plugin, I'd
> be glad to help.
>
> To Lex Trotman's "rant",

Erm, yeah, sorry about that. :)

I have to say I totally agree but also sort of
> disagree. Doing auto-indentation by using the full language grammar is
> definitely good to have, but it presents some problems. In every IDE I've
> used that does this, it allows you to configure it to some degree to work
> with the way you format your code, but any deviation from the norm becomes a
> total headache.

Yes, they tend to suffer from the problem I noted, programmers cater
for the methods they know, which they regard as "correct", and don't
think about the methods they don't use.

> I've always liked that Geany gives me lots of auto-complete
> options, but if I so desire, I can strip those options down to "only insert
> exactly what I type".

Any changes made to Geany should keep the ability to use "same as last
line" and "no autoindent at all" options as well as any smart options.

In my opinion, keeping multiple auto-indentation
> styles would be better. The basic/current char methods are nice because
> they're very simple but provide some form of auto-indentation, but I agree
> that perfecting a more "complete" auto-indentation (or even auto-formating
> in general) system is important.

Yes, I agree it is important, "housekeeping" like indentation reduces
your productivity and invites differences between programmers. Even if
you do it with a styler it can be forgotten.  So automatic indentation
is important.  But it has to match your language/style or it tends to
be a negative not a positive.

Cheers
Lex


>
> I'm going to think about all of this a bit more, and if I have any other
> comments or questions, I'll send another e-mail I suppose. Thanks for the
> replies!
>
> --
> Sincerely,
> Braden Walters
>
>
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