Coding standards

Medland, Bill Bill.Medland at accpac.com
Wed Nov 27 15:28:00 CST 2002


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dimitrie O. Paun [mailto:dpaun at rogers.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, November 27, 2002 10:04 AM
> To: Medland, Bill; Wine devel (E-mail)
> Subject: Re: Coding standards
> 
> 
> On November 27, 2002 12:45 pm, Medland, Bill wrote:
> > which is what I hate.  This is the worst of both worlds.  
> Either use Tabs
> > throughout so that a tab equals an indent and so people can 
> set the tab
> > size to whatever they like or else don't use tabs at all 
> and use explicit
> > spaces.
> 
> And what's so bad about mixing spaces and tabs? Using only tabs is
> (1) hard/impossible to enforce, and (2) still suffers from deviation 
> from the standard. It maybe workable in a company, but not on the 
> internet.
> 
> On the other hand, what's the big deal with mixing tabs and spaces?
> What's the big loss as compared to only spaces? This is just trying
> to impose (silly) policy on people. As long as we stick to the
> standard meaning of tab (which is 8, there's no question about it.
> What do you get when you send a file to the printer? Or open it in
> a non-customized editor?), there is no need whatsoever to force
> people into this or that way. And this without a loss for anyone!
> 
> Why do people feel a need to force others into certain way of doing
> things, when the end result is the same?!? This is like forcing
> people to QWERTY instead of DVORAK... I'm not against standards,
> I would actually like if we had more uniform looking code, but this
> is really unnecessary, as it serves no purpose.
> 
> -- 
> Dimi.
> 
Sorry if you thought I wanted to force people to do something "my way"; that
is far from the truth.  Personally I work hard at using four space indent
and no tabs at all.  (I have experience of working with a lot of code
maintained by some people who work with a four-space tab and some who work
with 8 and so am fed up with having to keep swapping between two settings.
Therefore I try and avoid tabs.)  However my own opinion is that one should
fit in with the existing local conventions.

You are right; provided everyone sticks to 8-space tabs then it doesn't
matter.  But if one only uses spaces then it doesn't matter one way or the
other.  I merely offer this as a suggestion for people to consider.

Bill



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