🚀 go-pugleaf

"Chad Myers" <cmyers@N0.S.P4.M.austin.rr.com> wrote in message
news:PNBZ8.126992$eF5.3545023@twister.austin.rr.com...
>
> "Ryan Breidenbach" <ryan_breidenbach@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:55e900c9.0207172004.28c3d0ed@posting.google.com...
> > > : Yes, but almost all editors will allow you to place spaces instead
of
> > > : tabs, still saving keystokes.
> > >
> > > It's not the same when outdenting.
> >
> > Agreed. Still, most decent IDEs/text editors will handle this for you,
> > as well (usually by hitting Shift+Tab). Even so, this doesn't seem to
> > outweigh how much tabs can jack up how code looks.
> >
> > As I mentioned before, I see people using them to line up things other
> > than standard indentions (e.g. methods, inner classes, etc).
> >
> > For example, many people like to line up variable declarations like
> > so:
> >
> >   private int              id;
> >   private PreparedStatment stmt;
> >   private String           name;
> >
> > As you can see in my post, they remain lined up, because they are
> > aligned with spaces. Suppose I used tabs instead, but I set my tabs to
> > equal two spaces (hey, it's my choice). Suppose you have your tabs set
> > to four spaces. Here is what that code would look like with tabs:
> >
> >   private int                               id;
> >   private PreparedStatement stmt;
> >   private String                    name;
> >
> > Huh? That doesn't look so good. God help you if you have your tabs set
> > to eight :-) This is why I can't stand tabs.
>
> LOL, one tiny example.
>
> For everything else, Tabs win.
>
> So, use spaces for outdenting and tabs for everything else.
>
> Using spaces for everything just because outdenting looks
> better with spaces doesn't make much sense.
>
> -c

Still not a convincing argument about spaces ... just use the tab on the
outdent to position at the next tab stop instead of just one space from the
longest type identifier.   If you use tabs, you can then even use a
proportional font and have everything line-up the way you want.   In any
event, this is really not an issue because if you use a decent editor (like
Codewright), then you can at any time, select the block of code and have the
system do a conversion for you to whatever works for you.

--ET--