rails.vim indentation meddling

[i0n]

Surely rails.vim shouldn't be messing with tabstop or shiftwidth. Why not leave this under the users control? Enforcing the 2 space convention may have seemed like a good idea at the time, but I can't see why it is necessary or useful. At present files inside a Rails project are universally given 2 space tab indentation regardless of other preferences or file type. So a JavaScript file inside rails is indented two spaces (instead of the JavaScript convention of 4) As there are regularly a multitude of differing file types in a Rails project (and each programmer will have their own preferences or wishes to follow certain conventions), it just seems like rails.vim is getting involved in an area of configuration where it is not needed or wanted. Unless there is something I am missing?

[tpope]

First and foremost, rails.vim provides an interface to override the indenting settings to anything you like if you really want to:

autocmd User Rails/**/*.js set sw=4

Let's talk about Ruby first. After five years of fielding responses to this issue, I've found virtually everyone asking for an override has been a brand new Rails developer, working solo, blindly porting over his personal preferences from his previous language without even stopping to consider it. Pretty much everyone I've explained the override to has opted not to use it once being informed of how breaking that convention wasn't a good idea. So I think it's a great thing there's some friction here; it's done way more good than I ever anticipated.

JavaScript is a more complicated beast. When I first added this feature (back when I first released the plugin), virtually everyone was using Prototype, which proscribed the same 2 space indent. Current favorite jQuery is more complicated, but looking through the plugins I've used over the last few years, hard tabs seem to be the most common, followed by 2 space, with 4 space in third place. Asserting "the JavaScript convention of 4" is dubious at best.

Given all this, I still think 2 space JavaScript indenting is the most reasonable course of action, and it's what I'll be continuing to do for the foreseeable future for any project where I make the decision (this should be a project decision not a developer preference, after all). I still see some value in gently encouraging others to do the same, but it's now open for debate whether the current behavior is "too much" encouragement. You're the third person in 2 months (after years of nobody raising a peep) to think it is. I'll consider tentatively dropping it after the next release is cut, so I can start getting some reactions.

[i0n]

Hi there! Thanks for taking the time to read the issue.

First of all, let me say: Thanks. I use a few of your vim plugins and I think they are great. Thank you for sharing. I don't want to detract from the fact that at the end of the day these projects are yours, and if you want to include/exclude a feature who am I to argue.

I'm sure that you are quite right in your assertion that beginner Rails programmers may find it useful to have indentation preferences set for them. Convention over configuration and all that. I'm just not convinced of the value of adding another (project type based) layer of indentation control to Vim. My preference is to configure my editing environment based on file type. Project based enhancements may be useful in some instances (I'm thinking of sytax highlighting), but I question the validity of putting indentation into this category.

Although this is a moot point within the context of this discussion, JavaScript convention is 4 spaces (or equivalent space as tabs). http://www.jslint.com/lint.html uses 4 spaces as default and virtually every JavaScript textbook you can lay your hands on will use 4 space indentation including JavaScript's very own PickAxe equivalent The Rhino book (JavaScript a definitive guide by David Flanagan). Ruby it's 2, JavaScript it's 4. Nothing dubious about it. To be quite honest though, I really don't care what the standard is, within my own editing environment I want to choose for myself. And I think I should only have to choose for myself once. Not very DRY otherwise ;-)

It proved trivial to remove this functionality (quick and dirty hack) from the plugin in any case, so I've forked the project and removed the indentation settings. Might be useful if anyone else wants to use rails.vim without inheriting it's indentation choices (or accounting for them in their .vimrc).

[tpope]

With CoffeeScript moving front and center in Rails 3.1, I plan to concede this battle. After the next release.

[i0n]

Cool. Although I like to think of it more as a conversation than a battle. I'm a fan, I come in peace! Minds not made up about CoffeeScript yet...

[tpope]

Done.