Re: show whitespace problems by default in diff-mode

[Óscar Fuentes]

Miles Bader <address@hidden> writes:

> Dan Nicolaescu <address@hidden> writes:
>>   > I guess, it's the same as with normal files:  some people are very
>>   > concerned with whitespace problems, but many do not care; for the
>>   > latter, whitespace indication would simply be annoying noise.
>>
>> The question is if the latter outnumber the former.   Given the amount
>> of rumbling about trailing whitespace, and the number of scripts/tools
>> etc. that deal with it, then I would say they don't...
>
> Huh?  "The amount of rumbling"?  You must be reading different dev lists
> than I do, because I rarely see it even mentioned; the git list has a
> higher number than usual, I'd wager, but otoh, the people there tend to
> be much more fussy (aka pedantic) than usual about lots of things.
>
> There are clearly some people that really, really, care about it, and
> they are indeed quite vocal -- but AFAICT, most people just don't care.

It's not only about pedantry. The worst thing about trailing whitespace
is that it tends to come and go while editing the file and when finally
the changes are committed it creates noise on VCS diffs and is
considered antisocial. This is why on some sites trailing whitespace is
forbidden and people there would appreciate a method for easy detection
and some tools for deletion.

Maybe not changing the defaults, but some highly visible thing somewhere
(a submenu item of Diff's menu, for instance) for activating an
"anti-whitespace" group of tools and settings would be justified by the
importance this features have for some users.

-- 
Óscar