Is it the case that most editors come set to interpret tabs as 8 characters?
One reason this might not be the case is so that every programmer can have his own indent level, established by his own preference for hard tab size. So a setting of "2" gives one hard tab for every indent level in the current discussion, and a coder who prefers 4 or 8 changes his hard tab size to that. (Not that I'm arguing for that feature, just observing that editor writers might use that as a justification.)
