🚀 go-pugleaf

"Ryan Breidenbach" <ryan_breidenbach@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:55e900c9.0207231412.2ca51206@posting.google.com...
> > Believe it or not, there are some people who use proportional-width
fonts
> > for development, and spacing screws that all up. Hardly any of the
indents
> > match up.
> >
> > With tabs, they do.
>
> I don't see how things in a proportional-width font would be any
> different with tabs or spaces. Don't tabs just insert a configured
> number of spaces?
>
> As Dale has already mentioned, spaces are interpretted consistently
> everywhere. The same cannot be said for tabs. With that being true
> (and it IS), I can't see why you would want to use tabs.
>
> Personally, I indent my code 2 spaces, so I have my editor set to

2 spaces is too little for most people. I believe that there are studies
showing the optimum is liket 3 to 6. I use 4, but unfortunately work on a
project with people that use 3 and it is not fun when you have to change
their code.

> insert at most two spaces when I press the tab key. Sun, on the other
> hand, indents their code four spaces. Sun ALSO uses tabs in their
> code, and their tabbing is set to eight spaces. I don't mind that
> their indenting scheme differs from mine (2 vs 4 spaces) - that's
> their choice. BUT, it bugs the crap out of me that since I have my
> editor set to interpret tabs as two spaces, it shows up like this: (^^
> represents spaces as tabs)
>
>     public ArrayList() {
> ^^this(10);
>     }
>
> Obviously, this is not how they indented their code to show up.
> However, if they always used spaces, never tabs, their code would show
> up EVERYWHERE as indented correctly with no extra configuring as so:
>
>     public ArrayList() {
>         this(10);
>     }
>
> In order for me to see THEIR code properly, I have to go muck with MY
> configurations. This is why I say you should never use tabs.


Actually, if Sun only used tabs or only used spaces then the code would at
least be indented logically for any tab setting. Their mixture of tabs and
spaces is much worse. Then it only indents correctly at 8 character tabs and
a non-proportional font. The indenting is much worse with 4 character tabs.
--
  Dale King