🚀 go-pugleaf

In comp.lang.java.advocacy Dale King <KingD@tce.com> wrote:
: "Tim Tyler" <tim@tt1.org> wrote in message news:H03GIu.JA5@bath.ac.uk...
:> In comp.lang.java.advocacy Dale King <KingD@tce.com> wrote:
:> : "Jon Skeet" <skeet@pobox.com> wrote in message
:> :> Tim Tyler <tim@tt1.org> wrote:

:> :> Have you tried Jalopy yet? I don't use it myself (I format my code by
:> :> hand) but I gather it's meant to be pretty flexible.
:>
:> : Yes, he has. We've talked about it. Unfortunately Tim has some weird
:> : conventions that it doesn't support.
:>
:> I believe you also reported that you couldn't get it to behave as you
:> would like ;-)

: To be more correct, I said that I haven't been able to get ANY formatter to
: behave exactly as I would like.

Both statements appear 100% accurate - except for the bit where you claim
yours is the more correct ;-)

:> : What he really wants is an indenter, not a formatter. All he wants it
:> : to control is indentation.
:>
:> I'd be quite happy with a formatter - *if* it worked properly.
:>
:> The problem is that formatters rarely seem to work properly.
:> The code they spit out typically looks to me like an undesirable mess.

: And that is because you are in the minority on some of the ways you want
: things to look.

Probably almost everybody's in a minority in *some* way.

I think it is basically because Jalopy is currently shafted.  It is
far too much of a control freak to be very useful as a day-to-day
indenter.

Maybe people could use it to get a foreign project into a more readable
state.

However I use the indenter hundreds of times a day.  Of those times,
on approximately zero occasions is it used for that application.

:> My #1 appliction is reindenting code as I edit it.  A tool that /just/ did
:> that would be very useful to me.  However tools that try and control every
:> aspect of the appearance of the code, don't understand what they are doing
:> and mess everything up are not very useful to me.  Currently I find Jalopy
:> falls in the latter category.

: Thus my comment that what you want is an indenter, not a formatter.

Yes, I do see.

*Actually* what I really want is a formatter - rather than an indenter.

I'd be prepared to settle for an indenter in the interim, though -
since a proper formatter seems to be well beyond the scope of
those writing these things currently.

:> I've got a formatting problem with Eclipse:

: The formatter included with Eclipse is worthless.

It is indeed of low value - but it is the best tool for Eclipse I have
found so far because:

* Both the available formatters make too much of a mess of my files;
* The built in formatter allows the selection to be indented - while
  Jalopy does not.

Indenting selected regions badly is somewhat better than nothing at all.
-- 
__________
 |im |yler  http://timtyler.org/  tim@tt1.org