Guido sees the light: PEP 8 updated

[Pete Forman]

Ian Kelly <ian.g.kelly at gmail.com> writes:

> On Mon, Apr 18, 2016 at 3:14 PM, Pete Forman <petef4+usenet at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Why is it that Python continues to use a fixed width font and
>> therefore specifies the maximum line width as a character count?
>>
>> An essential part of the language is indentation which ought to
>> continue to mandate that lines start with a multiple of 4 em worth of
>> space (or some other size or encode with hard tabs, that is not
>> germane to my question). The content of the line need not be bound by
>> the rules needed to position its start.
>
> How many spaces is "4 em worth"? How would you incorporate that into
> the Python compiler or a linter without needing to know what
> particular font the programmer is using? What happens when another
> programmer reviews the code using a different font and finds that
> there is only 3.5em worth of space? Do we descend into Calibri /
> Verdana line-length edit wars?

4 em is what PEP 8 implies, with the implicit use of a monospaced font.
I was trying to convey that the mechanics of indentation was not
relevant to my question about why Python and indeed other programming
languages are rarely edited or viewed with proportional fonts. The
programmer, other humans reading the source and the interpreter need to
be able to discern structure by the indentation. It is what follows the
indentation that interests me.

The current Python interpreter will happily digest a combination of
spaces and hard tabs as long as consistency rules are obeyed.

My question was intended to concentrate on the presentation after the
leading whitespace.

-- 
Pete Forman