Re: the competition's expm vs ours

[Thomas Weber]

Am Mittwoch, den 10.12.2008, 07:19 +0100 schrieb Jaroslav Hajek:
> On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 10:47 PM, Thomas Weber
> <address@hidden> wrote:
> > On Tue, Dec 09, 2008 at 08:55:33PM +0100, Jaroslav Hajek wrote:
> >> > Yes, but then the customizations for the files depend on users
> >> > individual settings.
> >>
> >> Which is good, isn't it?
> >
> > No, it isn't. I can adapt to whatever style Octave chooses, but please:
> > only *one* style, and that one enforced with an iron fist.
> >
> 
> I must be missing something important here. What *style* are you talking 
> about?
> The coding style, incl. indenting & whitespace, is part of the source,
> and that should be fixed.

Yes, and Emacs C++ mode sets some default (ie, indent is 2 spaces, ...)

> But I still don't see what good is this:
> /*
> ;;; Local Variables: ***
> ;;; mode: C++ ***
> ;;; End: ***
> */
> 
> What does it do, other than telling Emacs that this is a C++ source?
> Isn't it possible to configure Emacs so that it can tell from the file
> extension?

Yes, but I'm thinking more along the lines that different projects may
have different source guidelines for C++ files.

> That would mean adding a magic line like this:
> // vim:cindent:sw=2:cino={1s>2sn-1sf^-1s(0u0U1t0
> to every source file. Or there is a plugin for Vim to recognize the
> Local Variables blocks aka Emacs. Still, it will work only if enabled.
> 
> > I'm not
> > sure which other editors check for special syntax in the edited files.
> >
> 
> I think Kate does, for instance. And I bet there are more. Now, if we
> allow putting settings there for all editors we use, not only is every
> file going to be decorated with a pretty weird block of comments
> that's easy to forget to add if you create a new file (I bet most
> sources I created don't have the Emacs block), but we may run into
> problems. For instance, ViM by default searches only 5 leading &
> trailing lines for modelines. Maybe Emacs has a similar default. And I
> guess Kate has. So, the trailing lines are going to get really
> crowded, because leading lines should be reserved for the copyright
> clause.

Is this really a problem right now? Add the lines for vim and if too
many other editors come up, we can reconsider this. OTOH, if it's
possible to add per-directory configuration options to every of the
above mentioned editors, we should switch to that. 

What I don't want is every newcomer having to read through coding
guidelines for things today's editors can do automagically (actually, I
don't want to read these things myself :) )

        Thomas