radFormatter / docs / embarcadero style guide

Embarcadero style guide

radFormatter ships a built-in Embarcadero profile that maps its settings to Embarcadero's official Delphi Object Pascal Style Guide for RAD Studio. This page explains what that profile does, which style-guide recommendations it enforces, and which ones fall outside a formatter's scope.

Official style-guide references:

Using the profile

Select it on the CLI:

> radFormatter -profile Embarcadero -w -d source -r

The profile is a complete starting point. To adjust any individual setting, overlay your own JSON with -config — only the keys you list change:

> radFormatter -profile Embarcadero -config team-overrides.json -w source/MyUnit.pas

The companion radFormatter.Embarcadero.json is the full profile written out explicitly (equivalent to -profile Embarcadero). To adopt it, either save it into your project as radFormatter.json (the conventional active-config name) or pass it directly:

> radFormatter -config radFormatter.Embarcadero.json -w -d source -r

Download radFormatter.Embarcadero.json

Unlike the conservative Default profile, Embarcadero performs active formatting: it lowercases keywords, normalizes spacing, reflows begin/end and control bodies (lineBreaks.keepUser is false), and wraps at a 160-column margin.

See the configuration options reference for the meaning of every key.

Settings mapped to the style guide

Style-guide recommendation	radFormatter (Embarcadero) setting
Use lowercase language keywords, reserved words, and compiler directives.	casing.keywords: "lower", casing.directives: "lower"
Keep identifiers in their intended Pascal casing.	casing.identifiers: "asis" (radFormatter never rewrites identifier casing)
Two spaces per indentation level; no tabs.	indent.size: 2, indent.style: "spaces"
Two-space continuation indent for wrapped statements/declarations.	indent.continuationSize: 2
Keep compiler directives at the left margin.	indent.directives: "column0"
Indent case labels relative to `case`, and case-arm bodies relative to the label; keep `case`'s `else` with the labels.	indent.caseLabels: true, indent.caseContent: true, indent.caseElseAlignment: "withLabels"
Spaces around assignment and binary operators.	spacing.assignment: "both", spacing.aroundBinaryOperators: "yes"
A single space after commas, declaration colons, and semicolons; none before.	spacing.comma: "after", spacing.colon: "after", spacing.semicolon: "after"
No spaces just inside parentheses or brackets.	spacing.insideParens: "no", spacing.insideBrackets: "no"
No space between a routine name and its parameter parenthesis.	spacing.beforeParens: "no"
No space before an index/bounds bracket.	spacing.beforeBracket: "no"
No spaces inside generic angle brackets.	spacing.genericBrackets: "no"
No spaces around the subrange operator `..`	spacing.aroundRange: "no"
No space between a unary/prefix operator (or cast) and its operand.	spacing.aroundUnaryOperators: "no"
Put `begin` and `end` on their own lines; give control-statement bodies their own line.	lineBreaks.beforeBegin: "yes", lineBreaks.afterBegin: true, lineBreaks.beforeSingleInstr: "yes"
Keep at most one statement on a line.	lineBreaks.lineAfterSemicolon: true
Preserve the accepted `else if` same-line style.	lineBreaks.betweenElseAndIf: false
One `uses` entry per line, following the lowercase `uses` keyword.	lineBreaks.usesMode: "onePerLine"
Avoid vertical alignment of declarations.	all alignment.* off
Separate major logical sections with a blank line, but no repeated blank lines.	output.maxEmptyLines: 1, output.emptyLines.aroundSections: 1, output.emptyLines.betweenDeclarations: 1, output.emptyLines.beforeTypeKeyword: 1, output.emptyLines.beforeVisibility: 0
Wrap long lines at a conventional editor width.	output.rightMargin: 160

Handled automatically by the CST indent engine

Several style-guide layout rules need no option — the concrete-syntax indent engine produces them structurally:

Unit-level keywords (unit, uses, type, interface, implementation, initialization, finalization, and the final end) stay at the left margin.
Block contents sit one level inside begin/end, while begin/end themselves stay at the enclosing depth.
Nested (local) routines are indented under their enclosing routine.
then stays on the same line as the if condition.

Not enforced by radFormatter

Semantic / organizational (out of scope for a layout formatter)

These are recommendations about what the code says, not how it is spaced, so radFormatter deliberately leaves them alone:

Use descriptive names, Pascal casing, and no Hungarian notation.
Use dotted unit scope names such as System.SysUtils.
Put data types and symbols used by only one unit in the implementation section.
Arrange class members by access section, then fields, methods, and properties.
Prefer constants (or inline constants) for values that are never modified.
Prefer inline variables for tightly scoped block-local variables.
Avoid extra parentheses around simple if conditions.
Omit empty parentheses for parameterless routines unless required by the compiler.

Notes

casing.numbers is left "asis": the style guide does not mandate a hex or exponent letter case, so radFormatter preserves what you wrote.
output.lineEnding is "auto" (the platform default line ending; CRLF on Windows). Set it to "crlf", "lf", or "cr" if your project standardizes on one.
The profile leaves all reshaping.* options off, so it will not force call arguments, enums, arrays, or inheritance lists onto separate lines. The 160-column rightMargin still wraps over-long lines at their natural break points.