tab-related settings

[anntzer]

I'd like to suggest setting tabstop, expandtap, shiftwidth and softtabstop in a plugin:

• tabs are equivalent to 8 spaces and discouraged (http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/ref/rst/restructuredtext.html#whitespace), ie. tabstop=8, expandtab
• Due to the necessity of aligning directives, 3-space tabs seem the most convenient:

.. note
   content of the note

Note that

..  note
    content of the note

(4 spaces) is also accepted by Sphinx, but the syntax file doesn't highlight .. note (two spaces) properly. Meanwhile

.. note
    content of the note

is not accepted by Sphinx.

• It probably makes sense to set shiftwidth to the same value as softtabstop, but I don't feel strongly about it.

[marshallward]

Yes, I agree with this. I was already using this in my .vimrc:

tabstop = 3
softtabstop = 3
shiftwidth = 3

Not sure about the least intrusive way to configure this (apparently some sickos actually like tab characters) but I think it's a very good idea to enforce the 3-space indent.

I will look into it, but feel free to send your own pull request. I have a newborn at home and probably won't prioritise this!

[anntzer]

The default ftplugin/python.vim has the following snippet:

if !exists("g:python_recommended_style") || g:python_recommended_style != 0
    " As suggested by PEP8.
    setlocal expandtab shiftwidth=4 softtabstop=4 tabstop=8
endif

Something similar sounds reasonable? (default to 3-spaces, provide an opt-out)

[marshallward]

Yeah, I think that would be fine.

I am going over the specs and it says that Tabs are expanded to 8 spaces, so maybe the way to go here is expandtab softtabstop=3 shiftwidth=3 tabstop=8.

That way, any stray tabs in the file will be shown as the 8 spaces that they will become (if they use docutils, at least) but anyone writing in vim will always produce spaces (as recommended in the spec) and will indent around 3 spaces.

Also, while this works well for comments, directives, and bullet lists, it goes a bit wrong for double-digit enumerated lists and code blocks, and maybe other stuff. Probably obvious, but figured I'd mention it. Setting these is still an improvement over the current state.

[anntzer]

I agree with your suggestion.

[marshallward]

I've just pushed an ftplugin file to the project (b65ff52eee3f73bfee9c30d316258e17edcb79b4) with the recommended changes. I have no experience with ftplugin files, so I'm guessing there's a lot room for improvement here.