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

[Daniel Colascione]

On Friday 21 August 2009, you wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 6:28 PM, Daniel Colascione<address@hidden> 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.