[wingide-users] tab should ignore indentation of preceding commented out lines

[Mitchell L Model]

On Mar 24, 2010, at 10:34 PM, Wingware Support wrote:

> Mitchell L Model wrote:
>> When I comment-out a line with one or two #'s in the first column  
>> of the line (and similarly for other columns), Wing loses track of  
>> the indentation level where the next non-commented line should go  
>> -- I hit TAB and the line goes to column 1. It should ignore  
>> intervening comment lines. I would say that in general the editor  
>> should ignore everything starting with a # to the end of the line  
>> on which it appears, just like the compiler, except for the few  
>> commands that deal explicitly with commenting.
>
> This isn't really so straight forward.  If you are typing something  
> like this it gets annoying to ignore the commented line also:
>
> def x():
>   # do something
>   if whatever:
>       print 'x'
>
>   # do something else
>   |<- want to indent to here, not one level further
>
> This is a fairly common case so it's generally better to pay  
> attention to the comment.
>
> If you set the Editor / Block Comment Style preference to Indented  
> Comment and use the provided
> comment in/out feature then you'll tend to have fewer problems  
> around commented out code.
>
>> There is a similar issue with large chunks of code that are  
>> "commented out" by enclosing them in triple quotes, but that's  
>> uncommon enough -- and subsequent code is unlikely enough to be  
>> related to what comes before the commented out code -- that there's  
>> no point in worrying about it.
>
> Some people use block comments in the same way as others do  
> comments, so it ends up being
> a similar case as far as benefit of ignoring vs. not.
>
> At one point I thought we should ignore ## in column zero but I  
> think there may be issues
> with that also.  I'm not remembering the details at the moment.


Thanks. I just wrote a long dissertation on what I thought the  
behavior of starting a new line after lines beginning with # and ##,  
and whether the comments began at column 0 or not. While writing it I  
kept experimenting in Wing to see what it was doing for the various  
conditions, trying to characterize the problem I thought I was having.  
In the end I couldn't find anything reasonable to say.

The only problem I was able to verify was that tab wouldn't move off  
of column 0 after column-0 ## lines in between methods of a class. I  
can live with having to type four spaces in that situation if it is  
the only one like it.