InciseFormatters

Installing formatters

Edit ▸ Format Document (⌥⇧⌘F) tidies the whole file in one step, and it can be undone like any other edit. Web files are formatted by a copy of Prettier built into Incise. Other languages use the same command-line formatter you’d run in a terminal, which you install once.

Settings ▸ Formatter shows which ones Incise can find: a green check means it’s ready, a red cross means it isn’t installed yet.

Built in: Prettier

Nothing to install, in both editions. Prettier formats:

JavaScriptTypeScriptJSONJSON5HTMLVueCSSSCSSLessYAMLMarkdownMDXGraphQLXML and SVG

Other languages: install once

These run in the free Homebrew and direct-download edition. Each is one Homebrew command; if you don’t have Homebrew yet, get it from brew.sh first. Paste the command into Terminal (or Incise’s built-in terminal), then quit and reopen Incise.

Language	Formatter	Install
Python.py	Black	`brew install black`
Go.go	gofmt	`brew install go`gofmt comes with Go.
Rust.rs	rustfmt	`brew install rust`Already have Rust through rustup? rustfmt is part of its default install.
SQL.sql	SQLFluff	`brew install sqlfluff`Uses your project's dialect, or ANSI if none is set.
C, C++, Objective-C.c .h .cpp .cc .cxx .m .mm	clang-format	`brew install clang-format`
Swift.swift	swift-format	`brew install swift-format`
Perl.pl .pm .t	perltidy	`brew install perltidy`

Installed some other way (pipx, pyenv, conda, a language’s own installer)? That works too. See where Incise looks, below.

Your project’s settings

Each formatter follows the same settings file it would on the command line in your project: pyproject.toml for Black, .sqlfluff for SQLFluff (dialect included), rustfmt.toml, .clang-format, .swift-format and .perltidyrc, even when it sits in a folder above the file you’re editing. A personal one in your home folder (~/.sqlfluff, ~/.perltidyrc) applies where the project has none.

If a formatter isn’t found

Quit and reopen Incise. It reads your shell’s PATH when it starts, so a tool installed while it was running may not show up until then.
Where Incise looks: everywhere on your login shell’s PATH (the one a new Terminal window gets, so pyenv, conda and pipx set-ups are included), plus /opt/homebrew/bin, /usr/local/bin, ~/.local/bin and ~/.pyenv/shims. Check a tool is on your PATH with which black (or the tool’s name) in Terminal.
“Format failed” in the status bar is the formatter’s own error, usually about a syntax error in the file.
A problem in a settings file gets a sheet instead, because every format fails until it’s fixed. It shows everything the formatter said, and its Open button takes you to the settings file at the line responsible when that can be worked out. For SQL, it can come from a personal ~/.sqlfluff: SQLFluff reads it for every file, so one that names a templater plugin your copy of SQLFluff doesn’t have (dbt or Dataform, say) stops every format. Incise names the plugin, and offers the command that installs it where it can tell how SQLFluff was installed.
“Formatter timed out” means the tool took longer than 5 seconds, which is usually a very large file or a first run that’s still setting itself up. Try once more.

Mac App Store edition

Prettier works there too. Command-line formatters don’t: App Store apps run in a sandbox that can’t start other programs, so Settings ▸ Formatter shows them all as unavailable. The free Homebrew edition is the same app without that limit.