Decision records

0004: No formatting options

Status: accepted
Date: 2026-09-27

Context

Formatters differ in how much of their style users can configure. For example, gofmt offers no style options, while rustfmt offers many. Whether adocfmt’s rules take options should be decided before the first release, to reduce the chance of breaking changes.

Decision

adocfmt has no formatting options. Every rule is always on and writes one style.

Consequences

The formatter stays simpler. In the printer from decision record 0002, every option would be another branch in the functions that write the nodes. It would also multiply the combinations in which the rules run. Each rule would have to be correct in all of them, and the tests would have to cover each one. With one style, a rule knows what the other rules write and does not have to handle every output they could produce.
One style ends the debate about which style a project uses.
A project whose documents follow another style, such as prose wrapped at a fixed width, gets one large diff when it adopts adocfmt.

Alternatives

A few options, as Black and Prettier have: Each of them brings the costs above, for the few projects that need it.