From: sera@... (Francis Hwang)
Date: 2003-08-11T12:15:53+09:00
Subject: Re: Indentation Style

One thing that hasn't been brought up in this discussion is that a lot
of this has to do with how big you like your text to be on the screen.
If you're editing text with your text-size set to 8-point Courier or
something, then it's fairly difficult to see two spaces. Personally, I
set my monitor resolution as high as it goes (paying attention to
refresh rate) and then in BBEdit I view all files in Courier 18, so
individual letters are big and chunky and a 2-space tab is quite easy
to see.

It's a tradeoff. You want to be able to see as much text as possible
but you also don't want to strain to see it. I err towards really big
characters because I think small fonts make you strain without you
realizing it. If you look around any office at any random point you'll
see that half the people are subconsciously squinting and leaning into
the monitor, which is quite bad for your neck, shoulders, and back.

I've spent a lot of time and money over the last few years dealing
with injuries caused by bad ergonomics, so obviously this sort of
thing is on my mind quite a bit ...

Francis

Nikolai Weibull <lone-star@home.se> wrote in message news:<20030802121606.GA2615@puritan.pcp.ath.cx>...
> I've been meaning to ask this for quite some time.  Why is and
> indentation-level of two (2) spaces the standard for Ruby?  Is there any
> reason for it being so short/small?  I've been using eight (8), i.e.
> hard tabs, but been feeling it may be a bit too much.  But I don't think
> I would ever go below 4.
> 	nikolai