Subject: Re: bug#58665: Indentation in lisp/emacs-lisp/syntax.el is wrong

From: Stefan Kangas <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 3 Sep 2023 03:21:33 -0700

Jim Blandy <[email-masked]> writes:

> This code changes almost never. It's been like that since 2016. It
> doesn't make sense to let it sit there with formatting that obscures
> the structure of the code.
>
> On Thu, Oct 20, 2022 at 10:57 AM Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]> wrote:
>
>  > From: Jim Blandy <[email-masked]>
>  > Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2022 10:23:30 -0700
>  >
>  > 2022-10-20  Jim Blandy  <[email-masked]>
>  >
>  >         * lisp/emacs-lisp/syntax.el: Fix indentation in `syntax-ppss'.
>
>  Thanks, but we don't like pure-whitespace changes.  We fix these
>  issues when we change code around the places with wrong indentation.

I agree that we should avoid making whitespace-only changes in general.
Jim makes the point that readability counts.  He also points out that
this code changes so infrequently that we do not need to be overly
worried about any annoying merge conflicts.  I think these are valid
points.

So on balance, I'd be willing to make an exception and take this patch.
If Eli is still not convinced, I think it would be better to close this
bug and move on.  I think we can all agree it's not worth spending
energy discussing it further.