PLEASE READ: Whitespace rules

[markd at macports.org]

Juan Manuel Palacios <jmpp at macports.org> writes:
>Of the things that are particular to MacPorts, our Portfiles:
>
>
>
> * Portfiles SHOULD use soft tabs at a tabstop of 4, but implementation
>of this is left up to the discretion of the maintainer.
> * Portfiles SHOULD use the given modeline.

> # -*- Mode: Tcl; tab-width: 4; indent-tabs-mode: nil; c-basic-offset: 4
>-*- vim:et:sw=4:ts=4:sts=4
>
>
> We could add here that the standard *MUST* be met for nomaintainer ports
>(since anyone is allowed to jump in and edit, resulting in the same mix
>that we want to fix) and encouraged to the sole or main maintainer(s) (in
>the case of open maintainership) when the port has a proper
>father/mother. But needless to say, main maintainers are allowed to
>follow their own conventions if the suggested standard does not please
>them, and ask contributors to respect their choices in the case of open
>maintainership. Please feel free to bring up any polishing you feel might
>is appropriate to other MacPorts specific aspects of our code base.
>
>
>
> So, hopefully having cleared up any confusion, lets please move beyond
>the bikeshed and onto applying these very simple principles of good
>coding citizenship. 

I have not had time to follow the thread, and I've found out that "soft
tabs" are tabs emulated with spaces.  But though some are obvious, can
someone explain what all the elements of the modeline do?  Are any current
ports using it?  This needs to be documented.

Mark