[RFC 822 says there's no net-wide standard HTAB size]
On Tue, Jan 19, 1999 at 04:09:01PM -0500, Avery Pennarun wrote:
> That's what makes it a "de-facto" standard.
No, that does not make it a standard of any kind - in fact, it
suggests that not even a de facto standard existed. A de facto
standard is, by definition, a universally accepted convention which
does not have the weight of a de jure standard. If a de facto,
network-wide definition for a tab size were available in the early
1980's, don't you thing the RFC 822 authors would have codified it in
RFC 822 as a part of the de jure standard?
The fact that they didn't, suggests that no de facto standard was
available.
> Unfortunately, no standards, even de-facto ones, are universally
> implemented because there are people who (often rightly) believe
> that they're junk.
Oh? When there are true standards, either de facto or de jure,
usually /everyone/ who wants to interface with the universe implements
the standard. However, if they think a standard is junk, they also
implement a better system, as an /alternative/ to the standard.
> Yay for ^H versus DEL :)
This is different. ^H versus DEL has no relevance to the problem of
interfacing with the universe. Tab size has, as this discussion
shows.
Antti-Juhani
--
%%% Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho % [EMAIL PROTECTED] % http://www.iki.fi/gaia/ %%%
EMACS, n.: Emacs May Allow Customised Screwups
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