🚀 go-pugleaf

mfinney@inmind.com writes:

(Peter Seebach) writes:
 >>Tabs are the easiest, fastest, and *correct*
 >>way to express indentation.
 
 >Don't confuse the tab KEY with the tab CHARACTER.  The
 >tab key is easy and fast -- the tab character is merely a
 >form of space representation and not important.
 
 >> That's what they're for.

 >No, the tab character is to cause a printing device to move
 >to the next tab stop -- which somehow (due to CP/M, I
 >think) because associated with a stop every 8 characters.
 >But, even prior to CP/M other systems I have used assumed
 >a stop every 4 characters.  And the general rule is that the
 >tab stop locations are programmable.
 
Yes, I too rue the common equate in a programmer's mind
of TAB key/char with an fixed indentation level.  The flexibility
of the original idea of TAB-stops is certainly lost upon the 
modern world of text editors.   
 
In typewriter technology terms, the paper did not remember the 
Tab-stops, the typewriter device did.   Likewise, I'd not expect
the C source to "remember" anything at all about Tab-stops within
its character sequence representation.  Using editor TAB keys
as a navigational device is quite harmless.  Embedding Tab-stop
hints into a C source program is quite problematic, without rigorous
and formal Standardization.
 
Having said that, I do not see any other intersection between a 
discussion of the "TAB" idea, with the "Standard C" idea, and
so I should not comment further in this comp.std.c forum.
We could pick up this discussion in the comp.lang.c newsgroup
in the guise of a C style issue, I'd suppose.