Re: tabs vs. spaces in source code

[Graham Percival]

On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 09:19:43PM -0300, Han-Wen Nienhuys wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 7:08 PM, Graham
> Percival<address@hidden> wrote:
> > Seriously?  I'm *amazed* at all the work that Mark has been doing.
> > Despite the handicap of using windows (can't compile lilypond,
> > doesn't have the handy development environment+tools we take for
> > granted on windows), he's doing a _fantastic_ job!  I know that I
> > always used to say "oh, you don't need to compile the C++ to do
> > lots of work on lilypond programming", but I never actually knew
> > what I was talking about.  :)
> 
> Right - that is why in general I don't want to oppose people who take
> initiatives (like banning tabs), but in this particular case, I am not
> sure if the heat is worth the light.

Well, the whole thing began because there were problems in some
patches.  Rather than dealing with it as an individual case, those
involved wanted to find a general solution.

As it happens, we /do/ have a general solution, but it was never
clearly documented in the CG.  This kind of "oral knowledge"
causes problems when the old-timers aren't checking their email
every hour, because the new-timers try to re-invent that
particular wheel.  :)

Jan makes a good point:
- if it can be automated, automate it.
- what's our preferred automation tool?  It appears to be emacs.
- so let's use emacs to do the code formatting.

(therefore)
- if emacs uses tabs, we use tabs.  End of story. 


As an aside, could somebody (Francisco?) post a copy&pasteable
line to use emacs for the source code formatting?  Yes, I could
read the emacs man page and try to figure out how to use the emacs
-batch command myself, but there's other things that are more
important for me to do.

If somebody could post command-line copy&paste for:
  1) apply texinfo-all-menus-update to a file
  2) apply emacs code formatting (ideally for either cc files or
     scm files)
then I'll take care of adding them to the CG.

Cheers,
- Graham