Indentation can be helpful.
I suggest
(a) indenting the old version, without any other change.
(b) putting a #+ignore in front of it.
(c) on a fresh copy, make changes.
Anyone seeking to compare the old and the new will
have them BOTH indented.
The indentation can be done by m-xindent-sexp in emacs.
I don't know if people use anything else.
RJF
C Y wrote:
>--- Raymond Toy <toy@rtp.ericsson.se> wrote:
>
>
>
>>My own personal feeling is NOT to gratuitously change indentation and
>>what not, especially for large functions, no matter how ugly. Why?
>>When something breaks and you need to find out why, you can't just do
>>a diff between this version and that version, because it will show
>>that everything has changed.
>>
>>
>
>Aren't there options that allow diff to handle this? man diff lists
>several options which might be helpful in handling indentation changes:
>
> -i --ignore-case
> Ignore case differences in file contents.
>
> --ignore-file-name-case
> Ignore case when comparing file names.
>
> -E --ignore-tab-expansion
> Ignore changes due to tab expansion.
>
> -b --ignore-space-change
> Ignore changes in the amount of white space.
>
> -w --ignore-all-space
> Ignore all white space.
>
> -B --ignore-blank-lines
> Ignore changes whose lines are all blank.
>
> -I RE --ignore-matching-lines=RE
> Ignore changes whose lines all match RE.
>
>There must be some combination in all that which allows us to do useful
>diffs between differently indented files.
>
>In the long term, fixing atrociously bad indentation could help
>readibility of the code, if a solution to diffing could be found.
>
>Any diff gurus around who can tell us if such things work? Or maybe
>someone has a Maxima file they have made some changes to and indented
>for better readibility as a test case?
>
>CY
>
>
>
>
>
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