User-indentation settings not respected

[felixlinker]

I have the setting editor.insertSpaces set to true because I prefer indentation using spaces. In SQF or EXT files, however, the default setting always is to indent by tabs. It would be great if this could be addressed since I always have to alter the settings manually.

[Armitxes]

Some prefer spaces, some prefer tabs. Normally I would go by best practice / coding guidelines but Bohemia Interactive states that tabs and spaces both are okay aslong as they're consistant.

indent with two/four spaces or one tab. Do not mix these. SQF Best Coding Practices

Means there can be 4 valid cases:

• 2 spaces
• 4 spaces
• 2 space long tab
• 4 space long tab

Changing the width of tabs can be done with one setting and it automatically affects all files. Changing from 2 to 4 spaces or from 4 to 2 spaces however is more complicated as every file would have to be reformatted.

Same when changing from tabs to spaces. It's a bit safer to parse 1 tabulator to 2/4 spaces (can even be done via search/replace all) than converting 2/4 spaces to one tab - especially when the user didn't use autoformat or missed/has too many spaces somewhere in his project.

This is the main reason why I chose tabs over spaces as default, simply because it causes the least issues with user preferences. If someone has a better idea how to make everyone happy I'll implement it ;)

For your specific issue: In your vscode user settings you should be able to override the default settings once for all your current and future workspaces/projects/files:

    "[sqf]": {
        "editor.tabSize": 4,
        "editor.insertSpaces": true
    },
    "[ext]": {
        "editor.tabSize": 4,
        "editor.insertSpaces": true
    }

Hope this helps you.

[felixlinker]

Thanks for the pointer to the user configuration options.

I think it's suboptimal to set defaults regarding these settings. As you said - BIS leaves it open to the devs, so why alter it in the first place? Why not delete the default settings, e.g. in https://github.com/Armitxes/VSCode_SQF/blob/master/package.json#L101, and have the user settings be applied?

I'm not aware of any other extension that forces this by default, and I don't see a point in including this default.