Format Options Dialog Box - Additional Formatting Options (Visual LISP IDE)

Note: The Visual LISP IDE is available on Windows only.

Additional formatting options appear when you press the More Options button in the Format Options dialog box.

Approximate Line Length

The Visual LISP formatter checks this value when it chooses the formatting style. If the number of characters in an expression is greater than this value, the formatter prints the expression as multi-line.

Preserve Existing Line Breaks

When this option is selected, the Visual LISP formatter inserts new lines whenever a new line is detected in the text being formatted. When the option is off, the formatter can squeeze a multiple-line expression to the plane style, if it fits within the right margin.

Note: Selecting this option causes Visual LISP to ignore other formatting options when those options would result in a loss of existing line breaks. This is often the source of unexpected formatting results.
Split Comments

When this option is selected, the Visual LISP formatter splits comments that exceed the right margin.

Casing for Symbols

These options control whether or not the Visual LISP formatter converts the case of alphabetic text in an AutoLISP symbol name. The protected symbols subgroup controls the case conversion of protected symbols (that is, symbols with the ASSIGN-PROTECT flag set). The unprotected options subgroup controls the case conversion of unprotected AutoLISP symbols. The following options are available:

None: No case conversion.

Downcase: The formatter converts all characters in a symbol name to lowercase.

Upcase: The formatter converts all characters in a symbol name to uppercase.

The Long List format style option controls the formatting of long lists. Long lists are lists of formal arguments in defun and lambda expressions, or in quoted lists of atoms with more than five elements. The style option applies to long lists that do not fit on a single line (that is, within the Right Text Margin). Long List format style options are illustrated by formatting the following statement with Right Text Margin set to 45:

(setq lista '("abc" "def" "ghi" "jkl" "mno" "pqr"))

The options are as follows

Single-Column Formatting

(setq lista '("abc"

"def"

"ghi"

"jkl"

"mno"

"pqr"

)

)

2-Column Formatting

(setq listall '("abc" "def"

"ghi" "jkl"

"mno" "pqr"

)

)

Multi-Column Formatting

(setq listall '("abc" "def" "ghi"

"jkl" "mno" "pqr"

)

)

Fill-to-Margin Formatting

(setq listall '("abc" "def" "ghi" "jkl" “mno”

"pqr"

)

)