Re: 23.0.60; whitespace.el mishap

[Vinicius Jose Latorre]

> > Well, indeed the old whitespace-buffer had reported
> > where the bogus whitespace had happened.
> >
> > Instead of reporting, the new whitespace-mode
> > displays visually the bogus whitespace.
> >
> > Is it ok if the new whitespace-buffer is removed?
> >
> > Maybe a better alternative should be to create a
> > whitespace-report command which reports like the old
> > whitespace-buffer.

One point in favor of using a report function is that a
report gives you all the bogus whitespace line instead of
you having to run the whole buffer to see if there are
some bogus whitespace.


> My personal opinion is that the old whitespace mode was pretty wacky,
> and had lots of unneeded features and features which didn't follow Emacs
> conventions. It doesn't seem necessary to me to _exactly_ preserve the
> interface (maybe some def-obsolete-alias could be used in some case),
> just keep those commands which were actually useful, and maybe try to
> make them follow emacs conventions better.

Could you elaborate better this point,
whose functionalities should be kept
(via def-obsolete-alias) or not?


> E.g., how about:
>
> + `suspicious-whitespace-mode' -- highlights only "suspicious"
> whitespace, i.e., that which probably should be removed. This is
> sort of like the old "whitespace-buffer" command, but implemented as
> a proper mode, or like your "whitespace-mode", but only highlights
> suspicious whitespace. [dunno about the term "suspicious", but you
> know what I mean]
>
> + `cleanup-whitespace' -- removes suspicious whitespace [same
> definition as suspicious-whitespace-mode]

Well, the new whitespace.el uses a symbol list
(whitespace-chars variable) to select which kind
of whitespaces are visualized.

Some symbols (empty, indentation, trailing,
space-before-tab, space-after-tab) represents
the "suspicious" (or bogus) whitespaces.

Here are the "suspicious" whitespaces:

empty -- empty lines at beginning/end of buffer.

indentation -- 8 or more SPACEs at beginning of line.

trailing -- SPACEs or TABs at end of line.

space-before-tab -- SPACEs before TAB.

space-after-tab -- 8 or more SPACEs after TAB.

The whitespace-cleanup function already removes
the "suspicious" whitespaces.

Maybe the symbols above (the "suspicious" one)
should be renamed to, for example:

   suspicious-empty, suspicious-indentation,...

Or:

   bogus-empty, bogus-indentation,...

Or whatever other suitable name.