Allowing Arbitrary Indentation in Python

[Chris Mellon]

On Dec 19, 2007 10:46 AM, Sam <L33tminion at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Dec 19, 11:09 am, gDog <gslindst... at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi, Sam-
> >
> > I'm not wanting to start a flame war, either, but may I ask why does
> > your friend want to do that?  I'm always intrigued by the folks who
> > object to the indentation rules in Python, even though I've always
> > tried to keep consistent indentation in all the languages I've used
> > (and I've been at this since the 1980's).  Even my Perl coding friends
> > tend to insist on indents being aligned.  I'm just curious, that's
> > all.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > --greg
>
> His comments on the subject are in the LiveJournal comment I linked to
> in my original post.  I think it's mostly an idiosyncratic thing; he's
> used to laying out GUI elements in a hierarchy using tabs (in some
> language that allows arbitrary tabs) and now that he's experimenting
> with the (new?) Python API for the same toolkit, he wishes he could
> use the same coding style.
>


It's interesting that the solutions "move away from the terrible
abomination of a GUI toolkit" and "write Python wrappers that don't
cause actual physical pain" never occur to him. He's got a lot of
years invested in this layout so I understand the hesitance to move
away from it, but seriously - this is a really terrible way to do GUI
layout. The context manager solution is probably the best way to
maintain something close to the style he's used to.

All those setParent calls! *shiver*. I notice he retreats to the
"well, *I* can read it, so it's not unreadable" defense, which of
course applies to anything (I know people who can read x86 assembly
directly from hex dumps) without really addressing the merits of a
particular case.