Who are the "spacists"?

[BartC]

On 20/03/2017 14:32, Chris Angelico wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 21, 2017 at 1:24 AM, BartC <bc at freeuk.com> wrote:
>> But it would be better IMO if tabs were used, with some scheme for
>> suggesting the tab width (or set of tab stops) that is recommended (eg. a
>> comment at the top).
>
> If you absolutely have to, then sure, put a directive in some
> machine-readable way at the top or bottom of the file. It's like the
> coding cookie that Python follows - some editors also respect it. But
> I would prefer to just use tabs *without* suggesting a width, because
> each one represents *one indent*. Not a number of spaces. One
> indentation level.

For leading tabs at the start of a new statement that wouldn't be a 
problem. Changing the tab width shown just spreads out statements more, 
or less, horizontally.

It works - there is no jarring misalignment - because each tab 
corresponds to the same N spaces, whatever N happens to be.

But tabs are also used after statements, before comments for example, or 
to line up elements in tables. Then it doesn't work, because tabs may 
represent 1 to N spaces:

Using N=4, with 1 tab before each number:

     (one,   1),         #comment 1
     (two,   2),         #comment 2
     (three, 3),         #comment 3

Displayed using N=3:

    (one, 1),         #comment 1
    (two, 2),         #comment 2
    (three,  3),         #comment 3

Displayed using N=6:

        (one, 1),               #comment 1
        (two, 2),               #comment 2
        (three,     3),               #comment 3

Even tabs at the start of a line are sometimes using to line things up 
with a previous line; here with N=4, and 5 tabs before B and C:

  longfunctionname (  A,  #comment 1
                      B,  #comment 2
                      C)  #comment 3

With N=2:

longfunctionname (  A,  #comment 1
           B,  #comment 2
           C)  #comment 3

With N=8:

longfunctionname (  A,  #comment 1
                                         B,      #comment 2
                                         C)      #comment 3


-- 
bartc