🚀 go-pugleaf

"Jon A. Cruz" <joncruz@geocities.com> wrote in message
news:3D3399A2.60FE1538@geocities.com...
> Chad Myers wrote:
>
> > Tabs are preferable because the viewer can configure them to
> > his liking, whereas with spaces, you're stuck.
>
> Many professionals believe that spaces only is the better way.

If you use vi, emacs, or other older editors.

But, it still remains: if you use spaces, then your spacing is
fixed and everyone must live with it. If you use tabs, then
everyone can configure them to their liking and use whatever
font they want.

It makes no sense to spacing. It's like building a
non-internationalized app and then sending it out to the world,
it's just ignorant of everyone else.

>
>
> > Tabs should be treated as tabs. If they aren't, then the editor
> > is broken.
>
> Yes...
>
> But what is a tab? That is, where are your tab stops? Every 8?, every 4?
> every 2? every 3? First one at column 16, next one at column 20...?

That's the point. You can configure how you like your indenting.

Perhaps you like the first column indented at 4 spaces, then subsequent
columns indented 2 or 8!

With spaces, you have no flexibility. Depending on the font you're
using, it can look totally incomprehensible. Most files I get from
vi or emacs people are this way. Unless you're using vi or emacs,
they're illegible.

> Most text editors will default to 8 space tabstops.

Most? Not from my experience.

> However, quantitative
> studies have shown that 8 spaces is sub-optimal for program source-code.
And
> in much of the source code out there, tabs and spaces are often mixed.

Not mine. But at least if you have an intelligent IDE, it'll make something
of it. But if everything is spaces, you have ZERO flexibility.

There is only one argument why spaces are preferable: If you expect everyone
in the world to use vi or emacs, and that's just a rediculously absurd
argument.

I worked in a multi-editor environment and we standardized on tabs.

Everyone was able to pull up the documents and see the indenting just
the way they liked it. When they saved it, someone else could pull it
up and see it just the way they liked it.

Every once in awhile, someone would save with spaces and everything
would look completely hosed. We'd convert to tabs and everything was
fine again.

Spaces just make no sense whatsoever.

-c