I hate you all

[Timothy Madden]

On 06.04.2013 17:20, Chris Angelico wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 12:52 AM, Nobody <nobody at nowhere.com> wrote:
>> 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.
>
> 3. Tab stops are measured in something other than characters.
>
> With variable-width fonts, it's illogical to set tab stops in
> characters. DeScribe Word Processor defined them in centimeters, way
> back in the early... well, I didn't meet it till the 90s, but I don't
> know how long it had been around before that.

Yes, but systems with variable-width fonts do not make the default for 
the tab size now.