From: Bill Guindon <agorilla@...>
Date: 2005-03-23T08:54:03+09:00
Subject: Re: Any guides for good coding in Ruby? [OT] tabs vs. spaces

On Wed, 23 Mar 2005 08:17:53 +0900, Ben Giddings
<bg-rubytalk@infofiend.com> wrote:
> Martin Ankerl wrote:
> >> I try to follow the style that is predominant in the Ruby parts of the
> >> Ruby source.  Also, see:
> >
> > I also do this, but there is one thing I cannot stand: every ruby lib
> > uses 2 spaces for indentation! IMHO it should be tabs, and *only* tabs.
> > This is much better, because in almost every editor it is possible to
> > set the tab width to whatever one likes. I hate 2 spaced sourcecode,
> > because I usually set one tab == 8 spaces, and use a non-fixed font.
> 
> Yay!  Let's start a tabs vs. spaces flame war!!
> 
> My view?  Tabs should never, ever be used in a file.  (Ever)  Can you
> have a source code file without spaces?  I doubt it.  Can you have a
> file without tabs?  Certainly.  Is mixing the two the main problem?
> Yup.  Use only spaces.
> 
> It's funny though.  I think this eternal flame war is related to the
> other eternal flame war: vi vs. emacs.  In Emacs, the 'tab' button is
> most often bound to 'indent-command'.  This and 'indent-region' makes it
> really easy to use spaces for indentation, and to adjust/fix someone
> else's indentation when it's bad.  On the other hand, I think vi makes
> it much harder to use spaces for indentation, so tabs seem more attractive.
> 
> Anyhow, before throwing in your views, at least read up on other
> people's arguments.  :)
> 
> http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22tabs%20vs%20spaces%22

Ok, I did (some) of the required reading, and found some of those
people are crazier than I am (which says a lot, but it's probably a
good thing).

My issue with tabs is mostly due to working on the web a lot, and
using admins that are composed of many textareas.  AFAIK, there's not
a browser out there that lets you configure tab width in textareas,
and they all seem to default to the "traditional" 8 spaces.

btw, Mozilla 1.7.2 here, and if you know how to set that, I'll be
happy to hear it, but I'll continue to use my 2 spaces :)

Whatever you use (or come across in a file), shouldn't matter too
much, as most programmer's editors allow that to be changed fairly
easily.

-- 
Bill Guindon (aka aGorilla)