A Exhibition Of Tech Geekers Incompetence: Emacs whitespace-mode

[Xah Lee]

• A Exhibition Of Tech Geekers Incompetence: Emacs whitespace-mode
http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ/emacs_whitespace-mode_problems.html

plane text version follows:
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A Exhibition Of Tech Geekers Incompetence: Emacs whitespace-mode

Xah Lee, 2009-08-13

Just wanted to express some frustration with whitespace-mode.

Emacs 23, just released, has this whitespace-mode feature. It renders
spaces, tabs, newlines characters with a visible glyph. This feature,
is in Microsoft Word since about 1992.

This feature is important in practical ways. For example, when you
work with “tab separated line†files (CSV) that's a common format for
importing/exporting address books or spreadsheets. It's also important
in whitespace-significant langs such as Python. Or, in text processing
when placement of space and tabs matters in the output.

All i wanted, is to make Space and Tab and Newline chars visible.

However, the emacs whitespace-mode does much more than that. It is
designed for tech geeking control freaks to tune every aspect of white
space in his source code. The mode is filled with bells and whistles.
It distinguishes tabs mixed with spaces, EOLs mixed with spaces, EOLs
at beginning of file, EOLs at end of file, run on spaces at end of
line, lines that has nothing to do with white spaces but is simply
longer than 80 chars, etc. Each of these is rendered with different
foreground, background, colors, so that they cannot possibly escape
the notices of control freaks.

By default, most of these are on, so that, when you turn on the mode,
most reasonable clean source code become this colorful rainbow
unreadable ****.

I tried to tune it, with my 10 years of emacs of fucking 16 hours of
using per day, and 3 years of elisp coding experience. But, after a
hour, it's confusion hell sans avail.

O, that Alex idiot with his emacswiki, refused to lead emacswiki into
any readable state. All he can think about is my social skills. (See:
Problems of Emacswiki.)

What the **** motherfuck. Hi tech geekers, coding freaks, social
science ignoramus fucks, basic economics illiterate FSF fucks, freedom
abusing selfish ideologists fucks, Richard Stallman propagandist ****,
we-try-to-be-easy-to-use linuxer idioting fucks, **** U.

Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/

☄

 

[despen]

Sounds like a bad case of STRIS
http://blog.dcuktec.com/2009/08/stris.html

I believe the correct technical term for it is potty mouth.

 

[vippstar]

• A Exhibition Of Tech Geekers Incompetence: Emacs whitespace-mode
 http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ/emacs_whitespace-mode_problem....

Instead of writing a completely useless article you could had asked
for help in an emacs newsgroup, or wait until someone else does that
for you too (creating and publishing such configuration you desire).
Your article, except for the brief description of that mode, is
completely useless. Why would you fill your website with junk? Perhaps
because you like to write but you're too lazy to write something of
value.

 

[fortunatus]

Why would you fill your website with junk?

The OP made it clear:

 

[vippstar]

The OP made it clear:

You took my question out of context and answered it. I read the
article, it's not like I missed any of it. Plus, it's not a real
answer. "Because I wanted to". Why did you? Why would you?

 

[Jean-Michel Pichavant]

You took my question out of context and answered it. I read the
article, it's not like I missed any of it. Plus, it's not a real
answer. "Because I wanted to". Why did you? Why would you?

FYI, Xah Lee is a well known BTFL (Benevolent Troller For Life), you
shouldn't argue about one of his post.

 

[magicus]

FYI, Xah Lee is a well known BTFL (Benevolent Troller For Life), you
shouldn't argue about one of his post.

Argue??? He is kill filed here wherever I find him.

Life is too short to deal w/ idiots.

ciao,
f

 

[Xah Lee]

Fresh out of the oven:

• How to use and setup Emacs's whitespace-mode
http://xahlee.org/emacs/whitespace-mode.html

Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/

☄

 

[Byung-Hee HWANG]

• A Exhibition Of Tech Geekers Incompetence: Emacs whitespace-mode
http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ/emacs_whitespace-mode_problems.html
[... snip 38 lines ...]

OK, Xah, thanks for good writing, i'll read it 27 hours later. And i
respect for your passion on Elisp, Python and text processing. BTW, i
don't agree with your thought that you dislike FSF. FSF is not bad
guy. Xah plz...

Sincerely,

 

[John Nagle]

The OP made it clear:

Well, it took until Python 3.0 until Python enforced rules that
ensured that the indentation the user sees is the same indentation the
compiler sees. We finally have a solution that allows both tabs and
spaces but disallows the situations which are ambiguous. Until
Python 3.0 is fully deployed, there are situations when you need an insane
level of tab/space visibility. Blame Python, not EMACS.

John Nagle

 

[Steven D'Aprano]

Well, it took until Python 3.0 until Python enforced rules that
ensured that the indentation the user sees is the same indentation the
compiler sees. We finally have a solution that allows both tabs and
spaces but disallows the situations which are ambiguous. Until Python
3.0 is fully deployed, there are situations when you need an insane
level of tab/space visibility. Blame Python, not EMACS.

You know, there are situations outside of Python where it is useful to
see otherwise invisible characters. I was using Microsoft Word's "Show
Invisibles" functionality years before Python even existed. Being able to
see a visual glyph in place of whitespace (including line ending
characters) is not just useful for editing indentation.

 

[Jason Earl]

Fresh out of the oven:

• How to use and setup Emacs's whitespace-mode
http://xahlee.org/emacs/whitespace-mode.html

Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/

Xah,

I disagree with you about the usefulness of whitespace-mode's defaults,
and I certainly disagree with the need to use profanity on your usenet
post on the subject, but it is hard to argue against your
whitespace-mode.html page. Very well done.

Thanks,
Jason

 

[Rui Maciel]

This feature is important in practical ways. For example, when you
work with “tab separated line†files (CSV) that's a common format for
importing/exporting address books or spreadsheets.

CSV stands for "comma separated values" and the import facilities of any spreadsheet application lets the
user define the field separator character.


Rui Maciel