From: Seth Kurtzberg <seth@...>
Date: 2003-08-04T13:23:02+09:00
Subject: Re: Indentation Style

All UNIX printer drivers have a "convert tabs to spaces" option.

On Sunday, August 3, 2003, at 06:19  PM, Harry Ohlsen wrote:

> I tried to avoid jumping in, because this often turns into a religious 
> debate, but I thought I'd make just one point ...
>
> My biggest complaint about changing tabstops (eg, by doing "set ts=2" 
> in vi/vim) is that if, for some reason, I decide I really need to 
> print the code, it doesn't look the same, because the only tabstops 
> printers understand (at least, printers I've ever used) is hard 
> tabstops every 8 spaces.  Hence, the code ends up spread way over to 
> the right. You have the same issue in a pager like more/less.
>
> Vi/vim has a nice, clean solution to this.  Rather than pressing the 
> TAB key, you can use Ctrl-T to indent one more "shift width" and 
> Ctrl-D de-indents one shift width.  So, if you leave your tabstops at 
> 8, but set shift-width to something else (eg, "set sw=2") you get the 
> indentation you want to see in the editor, in more/less and on the 
> printer.  The shift-width is also what vi/vim uses when you say 
> indent/de-indent this chunk of text, so most people set it, anyway.
>
> As to whether you expand tabs to spaces, I don't think it really 
> matters, so long as you use Ctrl-T/Ctrl-D.  It's then just a question 
> of disk space (ie, having some of those spaces turned into TABs may 
> potentially save a few bytes, but it's probably not worth worrying 
> about).
>
> I'll shut up now :-).
>
> Harry O.
>
>
>
>
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Seth Kurtzberg
CTO
ISEC Research and Network Operations Center
480-314-1540
888-879-5206
seth@isec.us
-----------------------------------------------------------------