I hate you all

[Nobody]

On Fri, 05 Apr 2013 21:53:40 -0600, Ian Kelly wrote:

> 8 characters is common, but no more "correct" than any other,

This is pure revisionism. 8-column tabs may never have been a significant
/de jure/ standard (although they have been that in many specific
domains), but they have been a significant /de facto/ standard for almost
as long as computers have existed.

Historically, software and hardware which assigns a meaning to a tab
character has come in two flavours:

1. Tab stops are every 8 columns; this cannot be changed.
2. Tab stops are configurable, defaulting to every 8 columns.

Creating software which, in the absence of both a good reason and an
explicit mechanism for communicating the configured value, treats them as
configurable is usually a consequence of a "code now, think later"
mentality (although there may have be a few cases where it was a
deliberate "embrace, extend, extinguish" tactic).