* CommentingCode -- Emacs's abilities to handle source code comments.
* CategoryIndentation -- Information on prettying the indentation of numerous programming languages.

For those of us who have to go edit/maintain text files where the
original author has no respect for the sacred 80 column rule, I wrote
this little defun to clean it all up.  Well actually, it's still three
parts.  First I select the entire buffer with 'C-x h'.  I then run
<code>untabify-region</code> to convert all tabs into spaces, since
TabsAreEvil.  Second, I run a <code>query-replace-regexp</code> with
"\s-\{2,\}" replaced by just " ".  This gets rid of all those annoying
attempts to make variables line up after the type like this:

    char   c;
    int    i;

Personally, I think this just wastes horizontal space.  Of course, after
you destroy all the indentation you need to re-indent it all with your
style of choice: C-x h C-M \.  Finally run this little defun to fix all
the comments.  This will re-indent your comments and fill them where
necessary.  If the comment would fill to a paragraph less than 20
characters wide, it cuts the comment out and puts it on the previous
line.  This has only been tested on some of my stuff, so you will
probably need to manually review what it does.

    (defun dka-fix-comments ()
      "Move through the entire buffer searching for comments that begin with
    \"//\" and fill them appropriately.  That means if comments start too
    close to the end of line (20 less than the fill-column) move the
    entire comment on a line by itself."
      (interactive)
      (save-excursion
        (beginning-of-buffer)
        (while (search-forward "//")
          (lisp-indent-for-comment)
          ;; when the comment is deemed to be too close to the end of the
          ;; line, yank it and put it on the previous line before filling
          (while (< (- fill-column 20) (- (current-column) 3))
	    (search-backward "//")
	    (kill-line)
	    (beginning-of-line)
	    (yank)
	    (insert "\n"))
          ;; now fill the lines that are too long
          (if (and (not (end-of-line))
                   (< fill-column (current-column)))
              (c-fill-paragraph)))))


I'll go ahead and acknowlege here that I'm a remedial elisp hacker.
I'm sure the above could be improved in many ways.  Comments and hacks
welcomed. --LathI

Ironic, your approach would nuke all the things I do to "beautify" my
code. :) --ScottEvans

: Remember the golden rule of CodingStyle: 80x24. -- LathI

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CategoryIndentation
CategoryProgramming
CategoryComments