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List:       kde-commits
Subject:    Re: kdenonbeta/kio-rio
From:       Michael Matz <matz () ifh ! de>
Date:       2000-10-13 3:26:10
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Hi,

On Thu, 12 Oct 2000, Charles Samuels wrote:
> http://www.derkarl.org/why_to_tabs.html

;-)

I'll only deal with one of your points:

  Tabs are meant to indent, that's exactly what they do, that's only what
  they do. They're not meant to format text, to align it in columns, to
  put your comments into a regular block. Spaces do that.

This is wrong. Tabs are not for indenting. It's fairly easy defined:
whenever a <tab> is encountered while rendering the file content, the
cursor is moved to the next tab-stob. Full stop.

Now, this _can_ be used for indenting, there is no doubt about that.
Problems begin, when the writer and the viewer of a text use different
settings of tabstops. Just look at any word-processor and a document with
nicely tabulated content. Then change the tab-stops. It's all screwed.

Similar to this one can't easily have another tab-stop setting when
viewing a text file, than when writing it. When this text file is shared
between many people they have to agree on a tab-stop setting. This
agreement is to place a tab stop every eight characters.

Note, that I'm _not_ one of those wanting to dismiss the use of <tab> as
indenting characters. But tab-stops are every eight characters. So people
who don't want to have a indent-width of eight can't use <tab> for
indenting purposes. It all would have worked if people wouldn't change
their tab-stop setting, that's why the one who invented tabwidth should be
shot. But in this crazy situation we are now (people using different
tab-stop), we have to throttle back even more, and prohibit <tab> at all.


Ciao,
Michael.

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