Moritz Lennert wrote: > >> You need to have 8 spaces tabs for the files to look correct. > > > > So? Tabs *are* 8 columns. Just like pi = 3.14159..., c = 299792458 m/s, > > etc. This isn't a matter of preference. > > I don't have any specific knowledge, and definitely no religion in this > debate, but according to [1] (and I have no idea how valid the author's > statements are), your point of view seems to be a bit *nix-centric.
It's not so much that my view is Unix-centric, as that the other popular platforms (Windows, Mac) are rather more willing to discard long-standing conventions (in some cases, this is meant to cause problems, i.e. "embrace, extend, extinguish"). Historically, software and hardware which interpreted a tab character fell into two categories: 1. Hard-coded (or hard-wired) at 8 columns. 2. Defaults to 8 columns, can be configured. [Note that the Windows console appears to fall under #1; if there's a way to change the tab width, I can't find it.] The existence of software which defaults to something other than 8 columns is a relatively recent phenomenon. And it's not as if the 8-column convention will be going away any time soon (e.g. POSIX has many such references, and is unlikely to make an incompatible change based upon "fashion"). > In the idea of trying to get more developers for Windows, wouldn't > it help to find a "standard" that applies across all platforms ? There are only two possible standards: tabs are 8 columns, or they're ambiguous and thus must be avoided. It's not as if Windows editors can't be configured to use 8-column tabs (given the amount of existing code that uses that convention, that would harm Windows users, which isn't the intent). -- Glynn Clements <[email protected]> _______________________________________________ grass-dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
