Here’s a summary of all the noteworthy stuff that has come up so far. You may
still want to read the other email chain for more depth.
I would like a plugin that automatically updates NetBeans’ indentation settings
when a file is opened for editing, based on the existing indentation in the
file. I’m willing to pay for this! The plugin does not have to do any indenting
itself (in fact, it should not). It just needs to update NetBeans’ indentation
settings based on the file’s contents.
creating the plugin: $100
adding status to the status bar: $50
donating it and getting it accepted into NetBeans itself: $100
-operation-
When a file is made active for editing (it is opened, reloaded, or switched
to), the plugin should examine the contents of the file to figure out what the
appropriate indentation settings should be. The plugin should then dynamically
update NetBeans’ indentation settings once it figures out the new settings. The
settings it should try to detect are listed below. Detecting any other settings
or doing anything else is beyond the scope of this plugin request:
expand tabs to spaces
spaces per indent
continuation indentation
label indentation
absolute label indentation
If the plugin can’t figure out any indentation settings from the contents of
the file, it should make a reasonable guess based on the settings it can figure
out and NetBeans’ current preferences. For example:
package foo;
public class Bar {
public int wazoo;
}
For the code above, there is enough Information to know that the standard
indentation is 1 tab, but you don’t have enough information to know what the
label indentation or continuation indentation should be. The plugin would need
to use what it does know and the NetBeans prefs to "figure out" sensible values
for these.
While not rocket science, this isn’t entirely straightforward because you can’t
just copy the NetBeans prefs. Continuing the example above, if NetBeans
specifies that the standard indentation is 2 spaces and the continuation
indentation is also 2 spaces, you can figure out that the continuation
indentation for this file should be one tab. If in NetBeans the continuation
indentation was 4 spaces (twice the standard indentation), the continuation
indentation for this file should be 2 tabs.
If the file has inconsistent indentation, the plugin should just pick
one—preferably (but not required) the most common indentation. Bonus points for
detecting the inconsistency and letting the user know (see the status bar stuff
below).
-status bar-
Another bonus of $50 for showing the status of the plugin in the status bar,
for example:
the plugin successfully detected the indentation settings
the plugin successfully detected at least the big two settings (expand tabs and
spaces per indent), and guessed at one or more of the remaining settings
the indentation of the file is inconsistent; the plugin picked one
the plugin just used the current NetBeans indentation settings (for example the
file is empty and has no indentation yet)
-summary-
I haven’t looked at the code, but I assume NetBeans has an event for when a
file is activated for editing (that is, the file is opened or switched to). I
imagine that this plugin could just listen for that event, and in the handler:
look at the existing code to figure out what the indentation rules should be
override NetBeans’ own preferences to those new values
The plugin can optionally provide feedback in the status bar, for bonus bucks.
Good luck!
