Deprecate tabs for indenting (was Re: Indenting with tabs vs spaces)

[Paul Boddie]

Steve Lamb <grey at despair.dmiyu.org> wrote in message news:<slrna0q23m.leb.grey at teleute.dmiyu.org>...
> On 4 Dec 2001 02:39:19 -0800, Paul Boddie <paul at boddie.net> wrote:
> > If you have a file which uses only "hard tabs" for indentation, and
> > someone then modifies their indentation level in an editor which
> > supports "hard tabs", and that person then uses "hard tabs" to indent
> > code in that file, then there isn't a problem.
> 
>     Yes, there is.  Hard tabbers, like you, forget that not all indention,
> even for the most stout hard tabber will always be tabs.  If you haven't
> figured that out yet, you haven't been coding long enough.

My use of the word "if" did have some bearing on the meaning of the
paragraph you quoted above, but I see that you find it much more
exciting or fun to bring the debate to the level of a semi-religious
argument.

> > If, on the other hand, someone loads the file into such an editor and
> > starts slapping the space bar to indent code, then you do have a
> > problem. 
> 
>     No, I don't.  Because when the file is saved all indention is in spaces.
> Never a tab shall be written out, period.  In that manner there are no
> problems.

And my use of "such an editor" also has an influence on the meaning of
that paragraph, but I see that you aren't willing to consider
situations other than your own. Therefore any discussion on this
matter with you is fairly pointless.

>     Furthermore I am not flaming people who use hard tabs.  I am upset at
> people who are arguing for hard tabs who, for three days, blatently ignored a
> simple example which blew their argument out of the water.  I am further upset
> by blundering nits who waltz into the discussion, throw out what a tab means
> in two entirely unrelated contexts, and then things he's the flippin' mossiah!

Your oh-so-powerful argument was based on "nice" formatting of some
code whose interpretation by the Python runtime was pretty much
independent of its indentation. I'm not claiming to know what a tab
means to all people, but it seems fairly obvious to me that you
consider the definitive tab reference to be whatever tools you use - I
was just pointing out that the definition of a tab has wider
significance, and I hardly think that word processing is "entirely
unrelated" to text editing.

Paul