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By: clabrown

hmmmm.

> Add comments ... reopen feature request ...

I'm so new here to the SourceForge forum system that It'll take me a while just
to figure out how to do that <grin>

> ... patches ... give me some tips

Yeah, maybe. I understand Patches vs. Features. Been a while since I coded in
java (it is java?) ... might be fun. My current job is no longer programming.
In a previous life I did modify my editor's code formatting behavior using it's
internal C like scripting language. Would probably take me quite a while just
to get a development environment working right to ?recompile? the existing code,
that might be a bigger project than changing the TabStop <grin>. I actually
loaded Eclipse / PyDev using "EasyEclipse" to short circuit the learning curve
because I didn't have enough time to really understand the full depth of the
Eclipse / Plugin world.

If I wanted to try to do this, what the list of development tools/environment
stuff that I need? My last revision control system, (which I put together before
CVS) was a custom "jury rig" based on RCS and a bunch of custom shell scripts
and make files, so I'd also have to figure out whatever modern system is in
use here ... (CVS or SVN?) My current main desktop machine is WinXP, but I could
setup a Linux or FreeBSD system if that was easier.

> ... unmaintainable ... reformatting whole blocks ...

<you can stop reading here, the rest is just religious babble ...>

All that talk in the other post you pointed me to about enforcing a community
wide style guide, in that detail, gives me the "willies". Makes we wonder what
color of gray nondescript jump suit they will be requiring me to wear while
coding on Thursdays, or perhaps what color of gray gruel I'll be allowed to
receive from the dispensing unit when standing in line for my lunch ration on
Wednesdays....

I'll admit that I've only been "coding" in Python for a few days, only in 
between
doing the "real" things I get paid for, so I haven't had time to really study
the actual Python docs, much less the "religious" texts on things like 
"community
style". Basically I've just been hacking short routines together to extract
some data from an SQL database and massage it into a particular format. I 
decided
to try Python to spice up an otherwise boring task and learn something new.
I also figured that with all the buzz, and all the heavy lifting having been
done by others to develop so many modules (like MySQLdb, csv, and optparse)
it would be a great tool kit.

I've spent quite a bit of time coding over the last 25 years or so ... and I
can't say that I can agree with that statement, at least not fully. I've worked
alone and in groups and I'm strongly convinced that the readability of code
trumps ALL other considerations. From my view point, if it's not easily readable
then it's NOT maintainable, period. I don't care about other stuff, if it's
hard to read it's hard to maintain because I'll have to spend a long time just
figuring out what the code was intended to do much less trying to find a bug.

Now your point about changing lots of lines to maintain spacing is valid in
the extreme example, and I'm certainly not saying that entire modules should
be reformatted for minor changes, or willy-nilly reformatted to suit my eye,
or your eye if there's not a damn good reason.

However, thats pretty much a separate issue, although perhaps marginally related
to how TabStops work... They ARE TabStops after all, and have pretty much 
behaved
the same since I started coding on the first teletype many moons ago (that was
after coding Fortran on punch cards ... now that's a horrid memory <grin>)...
So just because I want TabStops to act like "TabStops" doesn't mean that I want
to reformat code on a willy-nilly basis. But when presenting tabular or columnar
information nothing beats a TabStop ... after all that's probably why they are
called "Tab" the first 3 letters of Table.

Again, Thanks for your time. Cla.

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