A modest indentation proposal

[Erann Gat]

In article <3C0BF0E8.2F9E2641 at attbi.com>, Chris Barker
<chrishbarker at attbi.com> wrote:

> Erann Gat wrote:
> > In article <3C0BBC1A.6E4154F at home.net>, Chris Barker
> > <chrishbarker at home.net> wrote:
> 
> > > I if get this straight, you seem to think that the indentation issue is
> > > the ONLY thing getting in the way of NASA adopting Python.  The only
> > > "show stopper" at any rate.
> 
> > No, that is not the case.  In fact, you seem to have made this up out of
> > whole cloth.
> 
> I may have misinterpretted, but:
> Erann Gat wrote:
> > Fortunately, in this case the
> > list of nit-pick issues seems to be rather short.  There's not a whole
> > laundry list of issues, just this one.  Unfortunately, it seems to be a
> > potential show stopper.
> 
> I wouldn't call that whole cloth, I would call it a quotation. 

Ah.  Right.  My bad, I apologize.

The reason I didn't remember writing that is that I don't actually know
for a fact that it's true, I just said it in order to short-circuit the
argument that this issue should not be addressed because there might be a
long list of additional issues waiting in the wings.  There might in fact
be a long list of additional issues (I don't know) but I don't think
that's a valid reason to ignore this issue, but I didn't want to get into
a long tangential argument about that.

> > > By the way, did you suggest to the LISP community that LISP should
> > > optionally use something other than all those parentheses? That seems to
> > > be the main unimportant stumbling block when people used to C/C++
> > > consider LISP.
> > 
> > Yes, as a matter of fact I did.  I even implemented it (it's easy to do
> > within standard Lisp), as have dozens of other people.  The only reason I
> > haven't implement this suggestion myself is that I don't know how.
> 
> All you need is a pre-processor. With the tokenize module, it would be
> pretty easy to write one in Python. Or use pyindent, and modify it for
> your desires.

Yes, learning about pyindent is one of the useful things that resulted
from this discussion.  Apparently, tokenize might be another.  But the
real missing piece for me is how to make emacs support this.  I have never
hacked an emacs mode.

> > Yes, I suppose you could say this was a test of sorts.  Indentation is not
> > the only issue that meets with objections, but it is the one that is
> > easiest to solve.  My goal in making the suggestion that I did was as much
> > to see what kind of responses it would get as to actually get the
> > suggestion implemented.
> 
> Did we pass or fail? I think we passed with flying colors, but I imagine
> your criteria are different. If you wanted to find out whether you could
> get the Python community to all come together and re-work Python to fit
> your personal needs, the answer is no, and we could have told you that
> from the beginning.
> 
> By the way, even very good ideas that are well excepted very rarely
> actually get implimented unless the driving force behind the idea writes
> the code. See all the no-yet-implimented PEPs. In the free software
> world, you are not going to get anything done unless you write the code,
> or pay someone to write it for you. Good (and bad) ideas are a whole lot
> more common than good code.
> 
> I don't know who wrote pindent.py, but you can bet is was someone who
> wanted it, not someone who did it only because someone else suggested it
> might be a good idea.

Well, my confidence about my recollection of what I did and didn't say has
been badly shaken :-) but I'm pretty sure all I ever asked for was
feedback, and not for anyone to do any work.  I also believe that what I
was asking for feedback on was not a major rework of Python, but a
backwards-compatible extension.  That was my intention at any rate.

E.