Semantics of :standard-clj/ignore

[yuhan0]

The naming of :standard-clj/ignore feels somewhat off - someone unfamiliar with the language ecosystem could misinterpret it as referring to something much broader like official language features / standards, rather than being the name of a formatting tool.

At the same time it suggests too limited a scope – if one marks a form or file with :standard-clj/ignore is that really a tool-specific directive? I imagine the intent is not for a specific formatter to 'ignore' the expression and its formatting, but to express something like "We have carefully formatted this in a way that conveys something useful / important, please don't touch it!"

Imagining that other formatters implemented a similar feature, it would seem silly to have to say

#_:standard-clj/ignore
#_:cljfmt/ignore
#_:zprint/ignore
(def something
  [ with
  , { non
    , standard
    }
  , formatting
  ])

I think a more descriptive and tool-agnostic keyword to convey the intent would be something like :style/preserve or :style/keep-formatting.
There is some precedent for the style namespace in Cider's use of the :style/indent metadata key, intended for use across different tools.

(I wasn't previously aware of this feature, apologies for bringing it up only now - but hopefully any proposed change would be simply additive and non-breaking)

[onetom]

• :manicured, like it has the root of manual in it and it's also cured, like a resin, which can't be formed afterwards
• :style/as-is
• :style/manual
• :style/keep
• :format/keep
• :format/by-hand
• :formatted
• :formatter/off, like in IntelliJ Settings / Editor / Code Style / Turn formatter on/off with markers in code comments / @formatter:off
• formatter/hands-off! :)
• :format/me-not! :)
• :fmt/off - just to be concise

btw, why does this directive have to be a keyword?

since it's commented, it can also be just a symbol, which is shorter to type and looks less noisier, like #_manicured or #_style/preserve, no?

maybe we can make it memorable, by turning it into some emoticon O.o? like

• #_! - meaning, "formatter robot, just do NOT ... !"
• #_0 - apply zero formatting. my zero is even crossed, like #_ø
• #_x - asian version, like 🙅
• #_!F or #_!fmt - NOT Format

we are already using :- at the end of rich-comment forms, to prevent their closing paren to be compacted on the same line as the last form in it, eg:

(comment
  (+ 1 2)
  :-)

[onetom]

I guess the problem with using a commented symbol instead of a keyword is that it's more likely to be a false positive, eg. I really just want to comment out an x symbol, so #_x would prevent formatting the next form.

it's not a big problem though, since we probably don't want to leave many commented x symbols lying around our code base.
but even if we do, it's unlikely that the skipped formatting would be really bothersome.

#_! would be a great choice though, because it's highly unlikely we define or bind a single exclamation mark AND also comment it out AND want too keep this commented form.

[NoahTheDuke]

As I wrote in the PR that added :standard-clj/ignore, this is entirely consistent with the existing ecosystem. If a given project is using standard-clj, they're not going to be using other formatting tools and don't have to worry about having multiple formatting-related directives on a naughty form.

Including the name of the target library/tool in the directive makes it easy to find out what is being targeted, and allows for other tools to accomplish similar tasks without stepping on each others toes. (For example, fully-qualified keywords are better than simple keywords.)