Proper Batch Indentation in Sublime - batch-file

Question

I would like to know how to fix the syntax indentation for batch in ST3.
Currently, it only indents like the code below.
IF %num_args%==3 (
GOTO somewhere
GOTO somewhere_else
) ELSE (
ECHO some text
GOTO END
)
I checked the file Batch File.sublime-syntax but can't find a way to fix this.
Perhaps make some changes in this section?
parens:
- match: \(
scope: punctuation.section.group.begin.dosbatch
push:
- meta_scope: meta.group.dosbatch
- match: \)
scope: punctuation.section.group.end.dosbatch
pop: true
- match: ',|;'
scope: punctuation.separator.dosbatch
- include: expressions
if not where / what else can I do?

Answer 1

Indentation rules in Sublime aren't affected by the syntax definition outside of the syntax providing the scope that tells Sublime which rules to apply at any given point.
The rules for this are specified via tmPreferences style configuration files which contain the keys:
decreaseIndentPattern
increaseIndentPattern
disableIndentNextLinePattern
bracketIndentNextLinePattern
These keys represent regular expressions that indicate what the indent level should be based on the file content. A side effect of this system is that it can be hard to dial in exactly the indent that you want.
That said, the Batch File package that ships with Sublime doesn't contain any indentation rules by default. If that's the package that you're using for your batch file support, that would be why it's not indenting the way that you'd like.
If you're using that package, you would need to create a file with the relevant patterns in order for the file to be indented. In that case you could create an appropriate tmPreferences file and store it in your User package, as it's the scope specified in the file that determines which set of rules get used.
Alternatively if you're using a third party package, it may or may not have such a file in it, in which case you would either need to create one or override the existing one.
Creating one would still work the same as the above. If instead the third party package has some indent rules that you would like to tweak, the process is slightly different.
To override the file, use PackageResourceViewer to open the appropriate package file. If you use this package to open the file, any saves you make will automatically create an override that will make your file take precedence over the one in the package.
In the case that you need to create a file from scratch, the best course of action is to look at an existing package that is already doing this, to see how it's doing things.
The best course of action would be to find a package with a language as similar as possible in structure to the one you're working with to use as a base, although for a batch file I'm not sure if that's actually possible.
For illustration purposes, the Indentation.tmPreferences file that is included within the Shell Script package (which I erroneously made this answer about the first time) looks like this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>name</key>
<string>Indentation</string>
<key>scope</key>
<string>source.shell</string>
<key>settings</key>
<dict>
<key>decreaseIndentPattern</key>
<string>^\s*(\}|(elif|else|fi|esac|done)\b)</string>
<key>increaseIndentPattern</key>
<string>(?x)
^\s*(elif|else|case)\b
| ^.*(\{|\b(do)\b)\s*$
| ^.*\bthen\b\s*$
</string>
<key>indentNextLinePattern</key>
<string>^.*[^\\]\\$</string>
<key>disableIndentNextLinePattern</key>
<string>^\s*then\s*$</string>
<key>bracketIndentNextLinePattern</key>
<string>^\s*if\b.*(?!\bthen\b)$</string>
</dict>
</dict>
</plist>
For your purposes you would need to alter the regular expressions as needed in order to hint to Sublime what the indent should be, as well as modifying the scope that the rules apply to.
There is a forum post on the Sublime Forum that describes how the indent rules are applied by Sublime.
Additionally, if you're using the shipped Batch File syntax, it may be worth logging an issue on the Sublime Packages Issue Tracker. The packages that ship with Sublime are open source and the community helps to maintain them.
As such it's possible that (with some discussion) the default package for batch files could be updated to support this directly.