-;;;###autoload
-(defun whitespace-describe ()
- "A summary of whitespaces and what this library can do about them.
-
-The whitespace library is intended to find and help fix five different types
-of whitespace problems that commonly exist in source code.
-
-1. Leading space (empty lines at the top of a file).
-2. Trailing space (empty lines at the end of a file).
-3. Indentation space (8 or more spaces at beginning of line, that should be
- replaced with TABS).
-4. Spaces followed by a TAB. (Almost always, we never want that).
-5. Spaces or TABS at the end of a line.
-
-Whitespace errors are reported in a buffer, and on the modeline.
-
-Modeline will show a W:<x>!<y> to denote a particular type of whitespace,
-where `x' and `y' can be one (or more) of:
-
-e - End-of-Line whitespace.
-i - Indentation whitespace.
-l - Leading whitespace.
-s - Space followed by Tab.
-t - Trailing whitespace.
-
-If any of the whitespace checks is turned off, the modeline will display a
-!<y>.
-
- (since (3) is the most controversial one, here is the rationale: Most
- terminal drivers and printer drivers have TAB configured or even
- hardcoded to be 8 spaces. (Some of them allow configuration, but almost
- always they default to 8.)
-
- Changing `tab-width' to other than 8 and editing will cause your code to
- look different from within Emacs, and say, if you cat it or more it, or
- even print it.
-
- Almost all the popular programming modes let you define an offset (like
- c-basic-offset or perl-indent-level) to configure the offset, so you
- should never have to set your `tab-width' to be other than 8 in all these
- modes. In fact, with an indent level of say, 4, 2 TABS will cause Emacs
- to replace your 8 spaces with one \t (try it). If vi users in your
- office complain, tell them to use vim, which distinguishes between
- tabstop and shiftwidth (vi equivalent of our offsets), and also ask them
- to set smarttab.)
-
-All the above have caused (and will cause) unwanted codeline integration and
-merge problems.
-
-whitespace.el will complain if it detects whitespaces on opening a file, and
-warn you on closing a file also (in case you had inserted any
-whitespaces during the process of your editing)."
- (interactive)
- (message "Use C-h f whitespace-describe to read about whitespace.el v%s."
- whitespace-version))
-