Tabbing/Spaces

[Johann Hibschman]

Robert L Hicks writes:

> I am in the very basic stages of writing down what I want in an OSX specific
> Python IDE.

I'd like to see what you come up with, when you're done.  Sounds nice.

> While reading the reference manual it denotes that 8 spaces is that standard
> for indentation. However almost all the code (if not all) seems to use 4.
> What is the standard spacing on indentation?

Well, a "tab stop" is defined to be equal to 8 spaces.  However, on
most platforms (well, unix at least), unlike the Mac, a "tab stop" is
not the standard spacing for indentation.  A mixture of tabs and
spaces is most common, I'm afraid, since that's what emacs defaults to
doing.

My preference, which I think is fairly common, is that if you're
starting from scratch, use spaces in 4-space blocks for indentation
and no tabs at all.

-- 
Johann Hibschman                           johann at physics.berkeley.edu