Python indentation (3 spaces)

[Marko Rauhamaa]

Chris Angelico <rosuav at gmail.com>:

> Tabs for indentation have semantic meaning. Top-level has zero tabs.
> One indentation level is represented by one tab. Two indentation
> levels? Two tabs. It's about as perfect a representation as you could
> hope for. If you like your indentation levels to be as wide as four
> spaces, you can have that. I could have them at eight, and it wouldn't
> make a difference. And if someone messes up their code by using tabs
> to align all their comments, reject that code at code review time.
> This ain't rocket science.

That *could* be the situation. However, it is trumped by an older
convention whereby the indentation levels go as follows:

   0:
   1: SPC SPC
   2: SPC SPC SPC SPC
   3: SPC SPC SPC SPC SPC SPC
   4: TAB
   5: TAB SPC SPC
   6: TAB SPC SPC SPC SPC
   7: TAB SPC SPC SPC SPC SPC SPC
   8: TAB TAB

That's how emacs indents source code files out of the box, BTW.

Moreover:

   SPC TAB = TAB
   SPC SPC SPC SPC SPC SPC SPC SPC = TAB

etc.

This older convention is honored by Python2 as well.

This older convention has been honored by many operating systems (at
least UNIX, CP/M and MS-DOS).

If I had to choose between your scheme and the older scheme, I'd choose
the older one.

Instead, I have chosen to banish HT as an unnecessary distraction.

Your scheme also is ad hoc in that it doesn't follow its logic to other
ASCII control characters. Why not use VT to separate methods? Why not
use US to separate operators from operands? Why not use RS to separate
the operands of optional arguments? Why not use GS to separate logical
blocks of code? After all, those schemes would allow people to
personalize the visual representation of more aspects of the source
code.


Marko