regedit: consistent formatting

[Dimitrie O. Paun]

On December 8, 2003 01:09 pm, Lionel Ulmer wrote:
> Just to flame a bit (the lists were a bit quiet lately) : the only sane way
> to dealing with TABs is when TABs are used properly (ie by an editor that
> uses them only to go to the current C indenting level and uses spaces for
> everything that comes after).

(true, they are sort of quiet... time to make some noise! :) )

Well, I beg to differ -- I think *my* method is the only sane way! :)))

Seriously, I have heard the argument with the smart editor before,
but I'm afraid it never works out because people sometimes indent
using spaces. It simply requires a level of discipline that it's simply
too much to expect anyone to follow. Yes, you could argue that the editor 
should go and automagically replace spaces with tabs where appropriate, 
but this is still not feasible because a lot of people touch the code, 
and even the same person touches it using different editors, from different
boxes, etc. How are you going to make sure everyone has their editors
setup just so (if at all possible!)? Face it, there's no way it can
work, especially in an internet-like setting where you simply can not
impose such strict environmental constraints on people.

This clearly falls in the "doctor, it hurts when I do that" category.
Tab has a standard size, and that is 8. As long as we don't go about
changing that for no good reason whatsoever, we wouldn't have any
problems.

-- 
Dimi.

P.S. BTW, it is far simpler to configure editors to interpret TAB
     as indentation request. Then it can indent using tab/spaces/etc.
     as it desires. This has the huge advantage that is a local setting 
     only that doesn't depend on what others are doing. And in fact,
     this is what most editors do nowadays anyway.