General Formatting Conventions

The Open For Business projects follows the Sun coding standards for Java source code.
For information regarding this standard please visit http://java.sun.com/docs/codeconv/html/CodeConvTOC.doc.html

HTML code should be XHTML compliant. Groovy files should follow the same convention as Java files.

In accordance with this standard we use 4 space indention rather than tabs, and set the tab size to 8 spaces to make code with tabs easier to pick out. Make sure no code contains tab characters.
For XML/HTML/FTL files we follow the standard XML/HTML/FTL format (TODO: add link to a reference here). XML/HTML/FTL files should use 2 spaces instead of 4, but there are still number of files using 4 space indention. So it's better to keep the indentation used in each file to avoid confusion when committing.

We don't want tab characters in text files in SVN, because different editors and tools interpret tabs differently. All indentation should be done purely with spaces.

To change tabs to spaces in Eclipse, change these preferences in Window -> Preferences ->

   1. Java -> Code Style -> Code Formatter -> Show... -> Java Conventions [built-in] -> Indentation, select Tab policy as "space only". Enter a new name for this profile and click "OK".
   2. Java -> Editor -> Typing, and check "Insert spaces for tab".
   3. Ant -> Editor -> Formatter, and uncheck "Use tab character instead of spaces".
   4. If you installed Colorer, Colorer Library Editor -> Uses spaces instead of tabs.
   5. If you installed XML Buddy, XMLBuddy -> Formatting -> Uses spaces instead of tabs.
   6. If you installed Oxygen, Oxygen -> Editor -> Format -> uncheck Indent with tabs, indent size 4.
   7. Unfortunaltely neither of the 2 main FreeMarker pluggin have similar functionnality yet. But there is a solution :
          * Install AnyEdit plugin (http://andrei.gmxhome.de/eclipse/) and set its parameters in General -> Editors -> AnyEdit Tools. When using AnyEdit plugin, you should set it to
                o Strip trailing whitespaces
                o Create new line at the end of file
                o Convert tab to space (it's by default in last versions)

In Eclipse, for Java, you may use Ctrl+I to be sure of correct indentation.