Using tabs effectively. Was: Why not use tabs?

[James Logajan]

Justin Sheehy wrote:
> 
> "Gordon McMillan" <gmcm at hypernet.com> writes:
> 
> > Um, there's no tabsetting that will produce that result, but with
> > the wonders of email, maybe that's not what you wrote.
> 
> I believe that James was thinking in terms of typewriter-style "tab
> settings", where a tab is not a fixed width, but rather moves to the
> next column that is defined as a tab stop.  Such things are common in
> word processors, but absent in most text editors.
> 
> However, I have no idea how such things are relevant to Python.  :-)

I cut and pasted from vi. It is an obscure editor one might use on an
ancient operating system known as Unix. I still have no idea what my
original message looked like to Gordon McMillan or what he was using to view
it (I'm too lazy to go back and check the Usenet headers to see if it tells
me). I was merely trying to point out that one must also worry about
embedded tabs as well as leading tabs and that ... oh never mind!

P.S. In what editors does a tab NOT designate a move to the next defined tab
stop? I've never come across an editor that treated a tab as being directly
translated into N spaces regardless of column position.