From: Michael Garriss <mgarriss@...>
Date: 2003-08-03T03:13:30+09:00
Subject: Re: Indentation Style

Vim can do this too of course.  In a large development group (like open 
source) you just have to adjust the tab/space thing yourself before you 
start working.

Seth Kurtzberg wrote:

> There is no need for any additional code or info for emacs to strip 
> tabs.  emacs has the built in command "tabify" and "untabify"
>
> And, in fact, if you set up emacs to use tabs, emacs will use spaces 
> to get to a column which isn't a tab column; it will simply use the 
> maximum number of tabs and then the minimum number of spaces.
>
> So Ben's issues really don't exist as far as I can tell.
>
> However, since it is so easy to convert back and forth (tabs to 
> spaces, spaces to tabs) in emacs, one can certainly leave this as a 
> matter of personal preference.
>
> On Saturday, August 2, 2003, at 11:04  AM, Ben Giddings wrote:
>
>> On Sat August 2 2003 1:01 pm, Seth Kurtzberg wrote:
>>
>>> That is true of any tab size, providing you don't mix spaces in (as 
>>> noted
>>> above).  In fact I tend to use two, but I expand it to four or eight
>>> temporarily is I want to see the block structure more clearly.
>>
>>
>> You tab-users do make a good argument for tabs, so what happens when 
>> you want
>> to indent a continued argument list, or something else which isn't 
>> aligned on
>> a tab boundary:
>>
>> module Dumb
>>   class Fake
>>     def do_something?(bar, baz,
>>                       bat, buzz)
>>       true
>>     end
>>   end
>> end
>>
>> An admittedly contrived example, but hopefully ok for the purposes of
>> illustration.  Many people like that sort of alignment, where if 
>> there are
>> too many arguments for one line, they continue on the next line and 
>> line up
>> with the start of the first argument.
>>
>> I imagine you'd have 1 tab before "class Fake", 2 before "def 
>> do_something..."
>> and 3 before "true", but what about "bat, buzz"?  Can you do it in a 
>> way that
>> the code still lines up if someone changes their tab sizes?  I'd 
>> guess you
>> could do two tabs then a bunch of spaces, but it would seem to me 
>> that would
>> be hard to "police".
>>
>> Personally, I think the most important thing is never to mix tabs and 
>> spaces
>> and since I've had problems with tabs in the past, I never use them 
>> at all
>> now.  If you're interested in the topic, Jamie Zawinski has some 
>> great info
>> on his web site about it, including emacs defuns to strip tabs from a 
>> file
>> which contains them.
>>
>> http://www.jwz.org/doc/tabs-vs-spaces.html
>>
>> Ben
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> Seth Kurtzberg
> CTO
> ISEC Research and Network Operations Center
> 480-314-1540
> 888-879-5206
> seth@isec.us
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>
>
>