I hate you all

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Sat, 06 Apr 2013 11:01:04 -0400, Roy Smith wrote:

> In article <mailman.200.1365258042.3114.python-list at python.org>,
>  Chris Angelico <rosuav at gmail.com> 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.
> 
> What makes sense for a word processor and what makes sense for a
> programming language are two very different things.
> 
> Word processors are almost always working with blocks of running text,
> set in proportional fonts, often with multiple font sizes and styles. It
> is usually assumed that line breaks are ephemeral, i.e. as the text gets
> edited and reformatted, lines will re-flow.

Word processors mostly use tabs for aligning text, e.g. in tables and 
lists. Exactly the same thing that tabs are used for in source code.

Large blocks of running text are irrelevant, because tabs are rarely used 
inside large blocks of running text.


> Program text is almost always(*) displayed in a fixed-width font.  No
> font information is carried along with the program text at all; it is
> assumed the reader will pick a font and size of their own preference,

And tab settings.

If you're going to complain that changing the tab settings will break the 
layout of the source code, so will changing the font and size.



-- 
Steven