tabs AND spaces to indent standard libs??

[jeffcjohnson at my-deja.com]

In article <vmehf8vjwsn.fsf at buffalo.fnal.gov>,
  Charles G Waldman <cgw at fnal.gov> wrote:
> hzhu at localhost.localdomain (Huaiyu Zhu) writes:
>
> > The explanation is that the coder
> > - uses the insane default setting of tab=8
> > - prefers the sane indentation of 4 spaces
> > - still wants to use tab to help typing
> > - but forgets to do untabify afterwards
>
> Tab=8 is not "insane".  In fact I would say that setting tab width to
> anything other than 8 is insane.
>
> This (tired) topic is summarized quite nicely at
>
>  http://www.jwz.org/doc/tabs-vs-spaces.html
>
> which should be required reading for anybody who brings up this topic!

I appreciate the feedback from both of you.  I read the link provided
but it doesn't address my complaint at all.  I don't care if tabs or
spaces are used to indent, it's the _mixture_ of tabs and spaces for
indenting that concerns me.  If someone truly forgot to detabify the
code in the standard libs then it should be fixed.  If all tabs are
used, it doesn't matter what tabs expand to, it'll all be
proportionally spaced.  But using tabs on one line and 4 spaces on the
next and assuming that all editors will display with tab-8 can't be
justified (can it?).  Rather than [re]start a flame war, I would like
to have action taken.  I would like the python library code (which
serves as sample code) to be indented with all spaces or all tabs. I
prefer tabs but either way is better than the mess we have now.

The only reason I can think of for doing it the way it was done, is so
that people can dump it to the screen without each line of code
indenting 8 characters.  If that was the case, I still don't think it
makes up for the mess it creates when people try to cut and paste the
code into their apps...



Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.