From: Gregory Brown <gregory.t.brown@...>
Date: 2007-07-12T23:50:43+09:00
Subject: Re: Using TABs vs. spaces II. (the Philosophy flamewar reloaded ;-))

On 7/12/07, Jan Moli� <mig@1984.cz> wrote:
> FINAL QUESTIONS:>> 1. Should there be the only one coding style in Ruby? I would prefer this,> but...
Not coding style, indentation style.  It's not enforced, but youpretty much should follow it if you have any interest in sharing codewith others.
> 2. Do you think everyone would accept it? No, one group would accept> TAB-style, another group would accept space-style. Maybe there could be two> styles for each group.
Individual projects can decide their tabbing style.  I'd find itreally annoying to work with projects that use hard tabs instead ofsoft ones.
> 3. Would all people accept one of those two styles? I don't think so.
All people?  Of course not.  Most Rubyists prefer (or are willing toaccept) 2 space indentation.
> 4. So should Ruby interpreter allow only those two styles? I don't think so.
Huh?  The ruby interpreter is whitespace agnostic.  You're thinking ofPython.  Many of us dislike whitespace enforcement. :)
> 5. Is there any solution for TABs vs. spaces? No, I don't think so ;-)
Sure.  If you prefer tabs, just write a converter that substitutestabs to two spaces before sharing your code, configure it as a hotkeyin your editor if you'd like.  This is one line of regex in prettymuch every place I can think of.  (Something like: %s/\t/  /g works invim)
> 6. Is this "war" 50:50? Or is it finished? Or... Any ideas?
Beyond finished.  See *most* projects on RubyForge.  Tabs areconsidered evil in many languages, actually.
You mentioned that you don't care how your code looks to your friends,that's the exact opposite of how I feel.   It irks me that more than afew people lately have totally missed the boat that minorinconveniences for individuals can save a ton of hassle for thecommunity.