Re: IDLWAVE 4.7/Tutorial

[Jack Saba <jack.saba(at)gsfc.nasa.gov>]

Thanks, JD.

The section with the <M>, <B>, ..., clarifies the four variables used to control
positioning very nicely. And I can get almost everything I want with them.

However, it doesn't look like it is possible to use the continuation indentation
scheme I prefer. I usually want the first nonblank character in the second line
to line up with the beginning of the second word in the preceding line. Using
your example, the code layout would be

> pro foo
>    ThisPro, a
>    for i=1,10 do begin
>       print, 'yay' + $
>              AnotherVar
>    endfor
> end

That's what would happen in text mode (for me, using NTEmacs in W98) if I hit 2
tabs at the start of the "AnotherVar" line. If I can set up
continuation-extra-indent to do this, it would probably be sufficient, but I
would still prefer to be able to tell idlwave mode to use the same tab control
that text mode does. Is there a way to do either of these?

Jack Saba
<jack.saba@gsfc.nasa.gov

>

JD Smith wrote:
> 
> Jack Saba wrote:
...
> >
> > Basically, I want complete control of text layout in the buffer.
> >
> > 1. I enter
> >
> >    FOR i=0,n
> >       stuff
> >    ENDFOR
> >
> >    When I hit the <CR>, IDLWave reformats this by indenting the ENDFOR 3 spaces:
> >
> >    FOR i=0,n
> >       stuff
> >       ENDFOR
> >
> >    How do I prevent this reformatting?
> >
> > 2. How do I make tabs in IDLwave mode work the way they do in text mode?
> > Currently, the first tab moves the cursor under the first character on the last
> > line, but subsequent tabs fall into a black hole.
> 
> Think of <TAB> as more of a code cleaner-upper than a tab insertion
> mechanism.  Almost all programming modes do it this way.  Once a line of
> code is cleaned, cleaning it again will make no change.  You *really*
> shouldn't be lining code up by hand, it's far too tedious.
> 
> If you would just like code to line up as in your first example, try:
> 
> idlwave-block-indent 3          ; Indentation settings
> idlwave-end-offset -3
> 
> This will line the "ENDFOR" up with the "FOR".
> 
> Here's a little pictogram to help with the indents:
> 
> pro foo
> <M>ThisPro, a
> <M>for i=1,10 do begin
> <M><B>print, 'yay' + $
> <M><B><C>AnotherVar
> <M><B><E>endfor
> end
> 
> <M> = Main block indent
> <B> = Block indent
> <C> = Continuation extra indent
> <E> = End offset
> 
> in particular: <M>=3, <B>=3, <C>=1, <E>=-3 would produce:
> 
> pro foo
>    ThisPro, a
>    for i=1,10 do begin
>       print, 'yay' + $
>        AnotherVar
>    endfor
> end
> 
> see how <E> cancels <B> in the endfor line?  Pretty simple.  Your end
> offset is leaving things hanging.
> 
> <M>=0, <B>=5, <C>=3, <E>=-3 would make it:
> 
> pro foo
> ThisPro, a
> for i=1,10 do begin
>      print, 'yay' + $
>         AnotherVar
>   endfor
> end
> 
> Oooh, ugly.  But any degree of ugliness is tolerated.
> 
> Currently, <RET> indents the line after inserting the newline.  If you
> would prefer "<RET>" not to indent the line for you, you can simply set:
> 
> (local-set-key "\r" 'newline)
> 
> in your idlwave-mode-hook.  But I can't see why anyone would really want
> this... you'll just end up hitting <TAB> after <RET> everytime.  But
> give it a try if you like.
> 
> If you don't want <TAB> to behave specially at all (by the way, you can
> always use C-<TAB> to get a "real" tab in any case), you can simply:
> 
> (local-set-key "\t" 'idlwave-hard-tab)
> 
> but this is getting really silly.  The point of this indentation is to
> pick a style you like, and let IDLWAVE use it everywhere.  It makes your
> code so much more maintainable.  It would be nice if we could all agree
> on a code indentation scheme and commenting style, but *at least* a
> personally enforced standard is necessary.
> 
> Also, if you ever find that you don't like what your customizations have
> done, disable them.  Carsten has worked hard to make the default
> settings very useable.
> 
> JD