Text formatting & Indenting output. Best solution.

[Jack Matier]

I know the indent and new line characters. I know how to force my code to look a certain way by adding and removing \t within functions and strings themselves.

What I would like to know is what's the best way for outputting strings into the final page so that when you "view source" it's nice and pretty. I don't have control of where the code in the page so I can't assume how many tab characters is needed.

Let's take a look at what I'm talking about.

<?php
$string = <<<EOD
this text
is not indented 
once
EOD;
?>

<?=$string?>

    <?=$string?>

Would output to:

this text
is not indented 
once

	this text
is not indented 
once

While I'd like it to be:

this text
is not indented 
once

	this text
	is not indented 
	once

I can, and did, create a function to help with formatting.

<?php
function t($str, $l) {
    $t = implode("\t",array_pad(array(), $l++, ''));
    return str_replace("\n","\n".$t, $str);
}
?>

and by using that function

    <?=t($string,1)?>

I can have it output the desired amount of tabs in the view.

	this text
	is not indented 
	once

Ideally though, a person wouldn't have to use that function to allow the multi-line string to have the correct indentation.

[Dan Grossman]

If you don't control where in the page the code can be used, then you can't know in advance how many tabs to print.

[Jack Matier]

Isn't there a way to know the position in a document a function is so that one could call t('string') and have it use that position to do indenting? Perhaps abstracting the method a bit more.

I know when debugging I use __LINE__ and __FILE__ sometimes.

Or. How do you deal with this problem?

[Dan Grossman]

Or. How do you deal with this problem?

This isn't a problem, so nobody actually deals with it. View the source of this page. It's got different intending levels all over the place.

[hash]

The html output isn't the source code, it's just for the browser. You should concentrate on making your actual source files readable instead

[Jack Matier]

The html output isn't the source code, it's just for the browser. You should concentrate on making your actual source files readable instead

Oh I most certainly don't ignore that... but I happen to think both the script and the markup should be formatted in such a way that can be understood without having to run it through a program.

It sucks making a nicely marked up website and trying to keep it that way as it becomes dynamic.

[hash]

You can run it through tidy if you really need to.

[aldonjohnes]

this sort of topic is quite advance for me and really I picked up usefull info, thanks.