Date:	Sun, 9 Apr 2000 08:31:45 +0200 (IST)
From:	Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
X-Sender:	eliz AT is
To:	Richard Slobod <71231 DOT 104 AT compuserve DOT com>
cc:	djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject:	Re: Bracketing: A Matter of Style
In-Reply-To:	<38efa7aa.236701390@news.warwick.net>
Message-ID:	<Pine.SUN.3.91.1000409083129.7469I-100000@is>
MIME-Version:	1.0
Reply-To:	djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Errors-To:	nobody AT delorie DOT com
X-Mailing-List:	djgpp AT delorie DOT com
X-Unsubscribes-To:	listserv AT delorie DOT com

On Sat, 8 Apr 2000, Richard Slobod wrote:

> Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il> wrote:
> 
> >Changing the tab size is a Bad Idea, because that makes the visual appearance
> >of the program depend on the editor used by whoever looks at the source.
> 
> The only potential problem I can see is that, for example, someone working
> with 2-space-wide tabs might tend to have some lines that are over 80
> characters wide when the tabs are expanded to 8 spaces, but that's a minor
> problem, at least IMHO.  It's not like the source will be completely mangled
> when viewed with a different tab size.

The problem I was referring to is that the indentation gets completely
scrwed up if the sources are vewed with a different setting of a tab
width, or printed on a printer.

> Also note that 1) this isn't likely to be an issue if you're the only one
> who ever works with the source files in question and 2) it's trivial to
> replace the tabs with the desired number of spaces if you should need to.

The replacement with spaces should be done by whoever changes the tab
size.  But the number of editors which allow to indent with spaces
only is much smaller than the number of editors which allow to change
the tab size, and people tend to forget to do it, even if it is
supported by the editor.

- Raw text -