Re: the justifying of indented text

[Seb]

Hi Benno,


Thanks alot for the history of the changes!

> In short: When a file contains only pure text (paragraphs, bullet lists, 
> quotations, and such), there is no problem, nano will justify things 
> well. When a file contains only pure code and comments (like in a C or 
> Python file), there is no problem either: you will not type ^J on the 
> code lines, and nano is able to distinguish comments from code (through 
> quotestr) and will justify comments just fine.
>
> The problem occurs when code and text are mixed.  Or rather: when 
> *markup* (HTML) and *commands* (LaTeX, or whatever those \things are 
> called in LaTeX) are mixed with text without any intervening blank line.

Yes. Thanks for summarizing this clearly.

> But this does not explain *why* the justifying of indented paragraphs 
> was prevented/disabled when autoindent is OFF.  What purpose does this 
> serve?  Well, one reason seems to be your use case: when text is mixed 
> with *indented* markup or directives, these should not be considered to 
> be part of any paragraph.  This (or something similar) is what the above 
> explanation should have said.

There is that, but I think there is also another way to look at this. If 
auto-indent is OFF, then a ^<Tab> was not magically added my Nano, it was 
entered manually, deliberately, by the user. So it is reasonable for Nano 
to trust that the user knows what he wants, in this particular part of 
this particular file, better than a general algorithm, and to gracefully, 
politely respect that choice.

> Anyway, for your use case, I've improved the "Christmas-present" patch: 
> when autoindent is ON, you can also justify tab-indented long 
> quotations, and even tab-indented bullet lists.

Very nice, thank you!
Does this have any chance of making it into Nano's future release?


Kind regards,
Sébastien.