Re: `whitespace-describe' function missing

[Rajesh Vaidheeswarran]

Hi,

I'm not sure which version of whitespace.el you are using...

but, the function does exist in 3.1 (installed with emacs on fencepost)
and 3.2, which I had checked out last from subversions... 

rv

;;;###autoload
(defun whitespace-describe ()
  "A summary of whitespaces and what this library can do about them.

The whitespace library is intended to find and help fix five different types
of whitespace problems that commonly exist in source code.

1. Leading space (empty lines at the top of a file).
2. Trailing space (empty lines at the end of a file).
3. Indentation space (8 or more spaces at beginning of line, that should be
                      replaced with TABS).
4. Spaces followed by a TAB.  (Almost always, we never want that).
5. Spaces or TABS at the end of a line.

Whitespace errors are reported in a buffer, and on the modeline.

Modeline will show a W:<x>!<y> to denote a particular type of whitespace,
where `x' and `y' can be one (or more) of:

e - End-of-Line whitespace.
i - Indentation whitespace.
l - Leading whitespace.
s - Space followed by Tab.
t - Trailing whitespace.

If any of the whitespace checks is turned off, the modeline will display a
!<y>.

    (since (3) is the most controversial one, here is the rationale: Most
    terminal drivers and printer drivers have TAB configured or even
    hardcoded to be 8 spaces.  (Some of them allow configuration, but almost
    always they default to 8.)

    Changing `tab-width' to other than 8 and editing will cause your code to
    look different from within Emacs, and say, if you cat it or more it, or
    even print it.

    Almost all the popular programming modes let you define an offset (like
    c-basic-offset or perl-indent-level) to configure the offset, so you
    should never have to set your `tab-width' to be other than 8 in all these
    modes.  In fact, with an indent level of say, 4, 2 TABS will cause Emacs
    to replace your 8 spaces with one \t (try it).  If vi users in your
    office complain, tell them to use vim, which distinguishes between
    tabstop and shiftwidth (vi equivalent of our offsets), and also ask them
    to set smarttab.)

All the above have caused (and will cause) unwanted codeline integration and
merge problems.

whitespace.el will complain if it detects whitespaces on opening a file, and
warn you on closing a file also (in case you had inserted any
whitespaces during the process of your editing)."
  (interactive)
  (message "Use C-h f whitespace-describe to read about whitespace.el v%s."
           whitespace-version))





In a previous message, "Robert J. Chassell" writes:

>     Today's GNU Emacs CVS snapshot, Fri, 2003 Apr 11  12:37 UTC
> 
> In `lisp/whitespace.el', the `whitespace-cleanup' function says
> 
>     Use \\[describe-function] whitespace-describe to read a summary of the
>     whitespace problems."
> 
> but the `whitespace-describe' function does not exist!
> 
> The `whitespace problems' are described in the `whitespace-buffer'
> function and in the `lisp/whitespace.el' commentary.
> 
> -- 
>     Robert J. Chassell                         Rattlesnake Enterprises
>     http://www.rattlesnake.com                  GnuPG Key ID: 004B4AC8
>     http://www.teak.cc                             address@hidden
> 
> 
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