Re: GOP-PROP 1: python formatting - probable decision

[Graham Percival]

On Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 11:46:01AM +0200, Matthias Kilian wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 12:11:37AM +0100, Graham Percival wrote:
> > There should be absolutely no tab characters for indentation in
> > any .py file in lilypond git. All such files should be converted
> > to use spaces only.
> 
> I'd go a step further and recommend (for python files) that no tabs
> are used at all. Because, if you're using some editor like nvi or
> vim and set only shiftwidth to 4 (*enver ever set tabsize to something
> else than 8!*), you then just can pipe the whole buffer through
> expand(1) and you are done. If there were tabs in the file (other
> than in indentations), this would introduce spurious white space
> changes cluttering the diffs.

I added the word "for indentation" to the very first proposal,
since somebody (Trevor, maybe?) raised the question of "what
happens about tab characters that aren't used in indentation?".
After the initial tab-fixes (in at most 9 files), we'll use
python -tt for the build process, so no mistakes will creep in.
If there's some actual use for non-indenting tabs in python code,
people can go ahead and do that.

I think of any such use, but I thought it best to keep the policy
as narrowly-focused as possible.  The main rationale is to remove
confusion about how to indent .py files.

Cheers,
- Graham