3 line diff creates 700 line whitespace diff problem

[Marc Fonvieille]

On Thu, Sep 04, 2003 at 05:45:37PM -0400, Tom Rhodes wrote:
> On Thu, 4 Sep 2003 23:04:21 +0100
> Ceri Davies <ceri at freebsd.org> wrote:
> 
> > 
> > jon at witchspace.com pointed out to me that the section numbers in the
> > IPsec section of the handbook are slightly off: 10.9.4 and 10.9.5
> > should really be 10.9.3.1 and 10.9.3.2.
> 
> Thats bad.
> 

Many parts of this section are a bit "weird", like "Scenario #1" when
there is no #2, etc.
Maybe Hiten could look at it.

About whitespaces, in my opinion, it must be done when the file starts to
be too difficult to read: a lot of too long lines etc. or when the
"layout" is completely wrong (maybe this is the current case).
If you do it, this must be done in one time for the whole file, and fix
at the same time trailing spaces, tabs instead of 8 spaces etc.

> > 
> > My dilemma is that committing the attached patch to correct this will
> > also require that all the intervening lines (~700 of them) will need
> > to be indented to keep the whitespace consistent.  Would a whitespace
> > commit of that proportion be excessive, or a necessary evil?
> > 
> 
> Could the whitespace diff be applied with 'other' corrections?  Like
> simple stuff including spelling fixes, s/FreeBSD/&os;/g, etc?
>

Whitespace changes should be done in a separate commit, think about
translators, it is very difficult to read a diff when content and
whitespace changes are mixed.

> My personal opinion is that the section numbers should be in a logical
> and consistent order.  The whitespace could be fixed over time.
>

I agree.  And since the chapter will be changed soon (Tom's Kerberos
addition, many fixes in the IPsec section etc.) maybe we could wait for
the "end" of changes before.

Marc