Python indentation (3 spaces)

[Chris Angelico]

On Mon, Oct 15, 2018 at 8:56 AM Marko Rauhamaa <marko at pacujo.net> wrote:
>
> 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

I've literally NEVER come across this as a convention. Not a single
file that I have ever worked with has used it. Where is this
convention from?

> 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.

You're most welcome to use VT between methods. Not sure what you mean
by US, RS, and GS, but if they count as whitespace, you are absolutely
welcome to use them. I don't see why you have to use ALL of them if
you use any, but hey, if you want to, nobody's stopping you. What's
the issue here?

ChrisA