For those of us using vim modelines it would be great if they were parsed, allowing a per-file display configuration. Looking for __tabstop=*X*__ in the first few lines of the file doesn't seem too hard.

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Grzegorz Adam Hankiewicz wrote:
> For those of us using vim modelines it would be great if they were parsed, allowing a per-file display configuration. Looking for __tabstop=*X*__ in the first few lines of the file doesn't seem too hard.

Get yer own feature request! @;-)@ Yeah, that's cool, but I think that'd be a completely different feature request. I'm just asking for a little drop-down combo box in the project settings page to set a tab width. You want a feature that looks for Vim stuff, which is a bit different than my request.
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The target version field has to be set when it will *actually* part of the target release.
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Well, 0.8 came and went, can we please try for 0.9?

I use a tabstop of 4 in all my projects, so at very least tell me where the tabstop is defined so I can make a temporary fix by manually changing it for my installation!
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Hey, you see? I can play with statuses too... <pre>-_-</pre>
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Thomas Lecavelier wrote:
> Hey, you see? I can play with statuses too... [...]

That's not nice...
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+1 for setting tab-width.
I think this feature is not implemented yet.

Dear Chris Miller. hope you to check [[SubmittingBugs#Submitting-Feature-Request]]
Dear Thomas Lecavelier. if it is not invalid request, how about to reopen?
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No, it is not done, so it should be either "open" or "wontfix".

I did some research into it, and I believe that browsers hardcode a tab character in a @pre@ block to eight characters and it cannot be changed by any CSS or HTML attribute (I tried).

I believe the easiest way would be to replace every tab character with _n_ spaces in the method on line 25 in source:tags/0.8.0/app/helpers/repositories_helper.rb however, I am unsure how to do this, and I'm also very unsure how to:

# add a new field to the project model (an integer storing the desired tab width)
# add stuff in the view to display the new setting so it can be changed by project managers
# modify the method previously indicated to replace tabs with characters for display

I'm not a Ruby programmer, and I've attempted to learn Rails before only to come out of it massively confused, so I feel really helpless just standing here pointing and yelling "make magic things happen here!" If I did know how... I would give you a patch and not a feature request.
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Just an update...

I have found that by modifying the following lines of code:

source:tags/0.8.7/app/helpers/application_helper.rb#L192

<pre><code class="ruby">
def syntax_highlight(name, content)
type = CodeRay::FileType[name]
type ? CodeRay.scan(content, type).html(:tab_width => 4) : h(content.gsub("\t"," "*4))
end
</code></pre>

And

source:tags/0.8.7/lib/redmine/wiki_formatting/textile/formatter.rb#L58

<pre><code class="ruby">
CodeRay.scan($2, $1.downcase).html(:escape => false, :line_numbers => :inline, :tab_width => 4)
</code></pre>

I was able to hard-code my site to have a tab width of four characters. Mind you, this isn't a tab-stop - a lot of the time things don't quite line up, but at least they're only off by at most three characters! It's a far sight better than before!

If someone with more Ruby-fu could extract that to a kind of configurable variable we might have a worthwhile patch on our hands.
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I have found an even better way of converting tabs to spaces. This respects tab _stops_, which is the concept that a tab character doesn't necessarily expand to 4 (or 3, or 2, or 6, or whatever) spaces, but advances the line to a predetermined tab stop. Tabstops are generally at 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, etc.

Enough preaching about the Holy Tabstop. Here's how to make it work:

This uses the GNU CoreUtils @expand@ command. This works on files, so I just use Ruby's @Tempfile@ to create a temporary file, then delete it when we're done. You do need to add this line of code to the beginning of the file, however:

<pre><code class="ruby">
require 'tempfile'
</code></pre>

Now, add the instructions to your syntax highlighter to make it expand tabs to spaces:

<pre><code class="ruby">
def syntax_highlight(name, content)
type = CodeRay::FileType[name]
t = Tempfile.new("expandfile")
t.syswrite(content)
content = `expand -t 4 #{t.path}`
t.close
t.delete
type ? CodeRay.scan(content, type).html : h(content)
end
</code></pre>

Same thing applies to Wiki formatting. (don't forget to include the @require@ statement there, either!)

This also works quite well with the Ultraviolet plugin.
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Now, even more cool!

Add the following to @lib/redmine/core_ext/string/conversions.rb@

<pre><code class="ruby">
# Expand tabs to spaces
def expand(tab_width=4)
text = self.dup
out = ''
text.each_line do |line|
column = 0
line.each_char do |c|
if c == "\t"
next_tab_column = column + (tab_width - column % tab_width)
while column < next_tab_column
out << " "
column += 1
end
elsif c == "\b"
column += -1
else
column += 1
out << c
end
end
end
out
end
</code></pre>

Now, instead of all that tempfile nonsense, you can simply use @content.expand@ in @app/helpers/application_helper.rb@ (or @content.expand(4)@, or however many spaces you want your tabs to expand to).
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I'd say you just abandon tabs :)

But maybe a per-language setting would be okay. Ruby style is 2 spaces, C is 8, Python is 4, for example. Better than the current 8-for-all setting.
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Kornelius Kalnbach wrote:
> I'd say you just abandon tabs :)

Over my dead body.

> But maybe a per-language setting would be okay. Ruby style is 2 spaces, C is 8, Python is 4, for example. Better than the current 8-for-all setting.

I don't know what planet you live on, but I have yet to actually meet a living C programmer who uses a tab-width of 8. All the programmers I know use a tab width of 4, though I find that a tab stop of 2 for C is actually quite nice and compact while using smaller laptop screens.

Having a per-project per-language setting seems important to me. But this is a system that would require additional database tables and rot like that, so even if I do decide to take up a patch, it'll certainly be one of those things that would only ever be a candidate for a 0.x release, and never a 0.9.x release. I absolutely believe that it should be part of the Redmine system by default, as source code with badly aligned tabs can decrease readability quite dramatically.

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It this is such a hot topic, I'm happy to stay out of the discussion. CodeRay provides the option, so it's Redmine's decision how to implement it.

@Chris: Earth.
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There is a chance that this will be solved? I'd like to have the possibility to set tab at 4 without hacking the code.
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+Vote for this! I'm using tab size 2
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I've changed tab width at source code view. But, at diff view mode, it still shows me the tab width of 8. How can I change the tab width to 4 at diff view.
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duplicates,Closed,3065,"Tab Size" setting
duplicates,Closed,4217,Allow Changing Tab-Length for Code View