Why do all editors and people have to agree on tab stops? Is that not the whole point of tabs? -- that their representation can vary some depending on personal preferences while still preserving correct logical indentation.
Alexey 2001 Honda CBR600F4i (CCS) 2002 Suzuki Bandit 1200S 1992 Kawasaki EX500 http://azinger.blogspot.com http://bsheet.sourceforge.net http://wcollage.sourceforge.net ________________________________ From: Weiqi Gao <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Thu, July 1, 2010 10:16:20 AM Subject: Re: [The Java Posse] Re: Tab / Spaces anyone? Tabs are evil, period. Using tabs in source files means that every editor, viewer, pretty printer that is used to process them needs to agree on where the tab stops are. This is harder to achieve as the program reaches more people. That we are having a Tabs vs. Spaces debate is a consequence of us programming with mono-spaced fonts, which is not the only way to write programs. A peek at Knuth's books or The C++ Programming Language ought to convince you that programming in a proportional font would make your program that much more pleasant to read. Of course, in that context, you have to use Tabs for indenting and use Spaced for spacing. Using spaces for indenting would be evil. -- Weiqi Gao [email protected] http://www.weiqigao.com/blog/ On 07/01/2010 05:27 AM, Paul King wrote: > I tend to be in the 'tabs are evil camp' most of the time. Not that they > are evil but there are some missing rules in Reinier's list. Rule 3: If > you use tabs you must use them everywhere - you can't mix and match and > everyone else must too. Rule 4: Every tool in your toolset including all > future ones must support and allow customisation of tab sizes. If I am > browsing source diffs through fisheye and it converts tabs to 8 spaces > for display purposes, that might be fine on a large screen but less > useful on a mobile phone. In fact, this is the exact scenario where tabs > could be so useful but with many tools, they just aren't right now. It's > certainly better than it was 10 years ago but still has some way to go IMHO. > > Still, it's not something to get too worried about - you should be able > to convert from one style to the other with a keystroke in most IDEs. > > Paul. > > On Thu, Jul 1, 2010 at 7:48 PM, Mark Volkmann <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > > I'm surprised that all the replies to this thread are in favor of tabs > over spaces. In my experience, the vast majority of developers favor > spaces. For me there is one main reason I prefer spaces ... printers. > Sometimes I print code. Printers seem to always use eight spaces for > tabs which causes many lines to wrap and makes it harder to read the > code. If there were a universal way to adjust that then I'd be okay > with using tabs for indentation. > > This is the same reason why I don't like when lines are longer than 80 > characters. Many of the lines will wrap when printed. Also, I find it > harder to read code with long lines. That's why newspaper columns > don't extend all the way across wide newspaper pages. > > -- > R. Mark Volkmann > Object Computing, Inc. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
