Indentation defaults

[toastal]

If it is omitted, it defaults to two spaces.

I have some concerns with a lot of standardize formatting tools in some languages. As the years have passed staring at screens, my eyesight has been getting worse. For now at least 1–2-space indented code causes me a lot of trouble as it lacks the indentation contrast for my eyes & I have a lot of difficulty reading some code bases (Nix, PureScript, & JavaScript come to mind especially once nesting adds up). This can be mildly inconvenient or debilitation in the case of nested Nix sets with lots of lets. This tool, Topiary, may have a solution.

Some ideas:

1. As gofmt is the listed first as inspiration, consider the user-configurable tab character (U+0009) for languages that have yet to have years of establish code (and actually support tabs (Nix, PureScript do not)). This would allow folks that prefer 2 spaces to set it in their terminal/editor, and those that need less or more can do the same without affecting the code or the diff. …Or at consider bump this up to something >2 as the default (caveat: helps some vision impaired folks but braille users often prefer 0 or 1 space as it seems to use less space on the device).

2. Supporting & integrate EditorConfig before calling to the default (I see it in this project @ ./.editorconfig). If a user/project defines indentation for a file type, use that first before using the define value or falling back to the 2-space default.

Prompted by a vim-nickel issue I raised, where it seems this tool wants to be the go-to formatter for Nickel so the tool is in the position to ‘set the standard’ if it wishes. I’ve also raised the concern with OCaml recently (trying to learn) where someone recommended this tool, but for now Topiary appears it falls in the same category 2-space defaults with no easy road to configuration. My current hacky solution is wrapping ocamlformat in a of the same script with Nix that pipes its output to GNU unexpand which isn’t ideal.

After these tools start to cement themselves in their communities, folks get a lot of pushback from any change. The biggest example of this in the formatter space is over at Prettier where for accessibility reasons, they wanted to move to the default of 1 tab character (when a user hasn’t opted into a specific style or wants to follow the community/tool defaults) & it has been a slog to follow as the old tabs vs. spaces arguments arise to where maintainers may just opt to leave it alone than make a change (3+ years already). In Prettier’s case, even though it seems a lot of folks, myself included, are in favor of the change, it’s a bit hard to tell what the ‘real’ support level is as those most affected by the defaults not working for them are more likely to notice the issue & raise concern. Topiary is young, so I would like to bring up the idea earlier rather than later with the existing community.

[ErinvanderVeen]

Hej, this is great feedback, and while we do want to take the default from whatever is the standard in the respective ecosystem, we should of course make Topiary as accessible as possible.

In an older version of Topiary the indentation was user configurable, but this was removed in a refactor with the intention of adding it back. This has not happened yet. I have created #505 with a proposed change to add it back.

I hope this way we can have Topiary have the best of both worlds.

Reading .editorconfig is also definitely an option, but I think (for now) not one we want to explore just yet. I hope having a configuration distinct from .editorconfig is still acceptable.

Using U+0009 works well for editors that can then do with the character whatever the user has configured, but does not work very well in situations where the file is directly used. For instance Nix, like you mentioned. We want Topiary to be as versatile as possible, and therefore it has to always produce a final formatted file, with no further cleanup necessary by either an editor or some other tool.

Please let us know if #505 addresses your concerns, and if not, what we can do further to help you.

Kindly,
Erin

[toastal]

I left a comment in that thread.

The comments here are broad about the whole tool, but the last thing to address is if it should and who can decide on what becomes the Nickel defaults? I’m still afraid of the situation of being in an a large Nickel file, with many of the configuration language features I liked from Dhall, but not being able to visually parse it without the ability to change to an indentation beyond 2 spaces. If this tool become de facto like nixpkgs-fmt for nixpkgs (until nixfmt becomes ‘blessed’), readability will be an issue (especially with a goal of making Nickel a bona fide Nix alternative). This may not be the space for the conversation, but I’m unsure where else since the language seems to support any indentation.

[ErinvanderVeen]

I don't think it is Topiary's place to define the style of the language. For every language we try to stay as close as possible to what is most commonly accepted in that community. Hence, I think you would have most success approaching the Nickel community directly. This is probably best done through a discussion on the main nickel repository: https://github.com/tweag/nickel/discussions.

The maintainers can explain why they picked this as the "official style", and if they would be willing to change.

Regardless, I'll send the Nickel team this discussion.

[ErinvanderVeen]

I forgot to mention, but the Nickel team can also be reached on Matrix, if you would prefer a more real-time discussion: https://matrix.to/#/#nickel-lang:matrix.org

[toastal]

Tested, works for me.

[ErinvanderVeen]

Thank you!

I'll go ahead and close this discussion, but feel free to reopen if you have further concerns.