Subject: Re: bug#954: indentation in latex-mode in emacs-23

From: Stefan Monnier <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Sep 2008 16:31:54 -0400

>> > It's not something I can convince you about. And I don't think there
>> > is any correct or incorrect formatting style. It's just from my 10
>> > years experience. As I get older, it gets harder to accommodate new
>> > things no matter how small they are....
>> 
>> ... sounds convincing.  What about the attached patch?

> Sorry to disagree, but "change bad" is not a convincing argument to me.

> I prefer the current form because I think that

> \begin{math}
>   a = b
> \end{math}

> and

> \(
>   a = b
> \)

> should be formatted the same. A comment in the original bug that

I don't think there's a right answer.  But at least if the above two
alternative forms indent differently, that makes it possible for the
user to choose the indentation (indirectly) by choosing which form
to use.
So I'd argue that the two should *not* for indented identically.

        Stefan

PS: The indentation in tex-mode (for which I largely plead guilty)
usually indents a good bit more than what I've seen used in most LaTeX
files.  I tend to think of LaTeX as a programming language, and most of
what I write is LaTeX is about programming languages, so I like to
indent it more than people who think of it as "text with markup".