Using tabs effectively. Was: Why not use tabs?

[James Logajan]

Are you displaying e-mail using a Courier font (or other fixed-width font)
or with a variable width font? If the latter, the x characters may not line
up.

Both were cut and paste from vi. The first was with "set list" (I did erase
the "$" at the end of each line however). The tab setting was set to 4. All
other values between 1 and 8 will not make the x characters line up.

Otherwise I'm baffled as to why you can't reproduce the indented (intended)
result. Unless there really *is* a conspiracy going on. Hmmm....

At 08:49 AM 01/21/2000 -0500, Gordon McMillan wrote:
>James Logajan wrote:
>
>> .... For example, consider a file that contains the
>> following text lines, where ^I indicates a tab:
>> 
>> A^I^Ix
>> AA^I^Ix
>> AAA^I^Ix
>> AAAA^Ix
>> AAAAA^Ix
>> AAAAAA^Ix
>> AAAAAAA^Ix
>> 
>> The intent is to have that look like:
>> 
>> A       x
>> AA      x
>> AAA     x
>> AAAA    x
>> AAAAA   x
>> AAAAAA  x
>> AAAAAAA x
>> 
>> There is only ONE tab setting that will produce that result. 
>
>Um, there's no tabsetting that will produce that result, but with 
>the wonders of email, maybe that's not what you wrote.
>
>
>- Gordon
>
>