To <space> or <tab> or not :-)

[Stephen Clark]

Molle Bestefich wrote:

>>isn't it rather insane to require specific editor settings
>>just to be able to *view* the code?
>>    
>>
>
>It's a necessity for some editors.
>
>The TAB setting can be embedded in ASCII files, there are various
>magic comments that will cause vim and emacs to switch to a readable
>tabs setting.
>
>What is insane is 8 characters per tab.
>
>IMHXP 2 characters is too little to quickly make out the indentation.
>3 and 4 are both fine choices.  4 wastes slightly more horizontal
>space, so I prefer 3.
>
>8 is just nuts, it was probably written by someone who hates tabs and
>wants to use it as an argument to convince everybody to convert to
>spaces.
>
>Using spaces in place of tabs is bad, because you have to press
><backspace> and <space> so much the more, wasting your time and
>tearing your fingers.  And there's a higher risk of misaligning
>something - you have to pay more attention, which again is a waste of
>your time.
>
>You loose fine-grained control when you use tabs instead of spaces,
>but fine-grained control also means a jungle of bizarre rules about
>when-and-where-to-do-fine-grained-indenting, so it never pays off,
>rather it always ends up ruining the indentation anyway.  By far the
>easiest solution is to just use tabs, and just indent codelines that
>span more than a screenful (7x chars or what not) with an extra tab.
>
>
>  
>
I agree with this 100%. With tabs you can set the indentation to 
whatever you want.

Cheers,
Steve

-- 

"They that give up essential liberty to obtain temporary safety, 
deserve neither liberty nor safety."  (Ben Franklin)

"The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty 
decreases."  (Thomas Jefferson)