Spacing issues

[Kevin Ballard]

On Feb 9, 2007, at 12:39 PM, Ryan Schmidt wrote:

> I assume that's due to the stupid setting available in emacs or vi  
> or whatever editor it is that actually encourages that behavior.  
> The one where they've said "We want to indent to 4-space tabs.  
> However, the editor is configured to print 8 spaces for a tab.  
> Therefore, when we want to indent one level, we will use 4 spaces,  
> and when we want to indent 2 levels, we will use one tab, and when  
> we want to indent three levels, we will use one tab and then 4  
> spaces." And so forth. I'm convinced such an editor setting exists  
> somewhere, because I have seen this nonsense in other projects too,  
> even to the extreme of 2-space indentation. (Indent sequence: 2  
> spaces, 4 spaces, 6 spaces, one tab, one tab and 2 spaces, etc.)

I doubt that's the case. I see this in places where there's 2 tabs  
followed by 4 spaces. Why would somebody have their tabs set to width  
8 and then want to indent 4 for a nesting level? That makes no sense.

> No, not really a problem. I would accept extra disk space if this  
> solution brought significant advantages, but I'm saying it brings  
> drawbacks.

Do you view commenting code as a drawback as well? That adds far more  
disk space than changing tabs to spaces does. The disk space is  
simply a non-issue.

> I use TextWrangler, the free sibbling of BBEdit.
>
> Also, if I press the Tab key on the keyboard, it inserts a tab  
> character. Even if I could tell the editor to insert spaces  
> instead, I would not configure my editor this way, because that is  
> not how I want to use my editor in every other text file that I edit.

Funny, I use soft tabs almost exclusively, and dislike it when I have  
to switch back to hard tabs just to fit the indentation used by a  
particular text file.

> Now I'm curious: What editor do other people use to edit their  
> portfiles?

Usually TextMate, but sometimes vim.

> I'm just saying that you may like 2-space tabs, but I don't. If  
> that's what we standardize on, I'll be unhappy. Someone else may  
> like 3-space tabs, and they'll be unhappy unless we choose that.  
> Why choose at all? Why not let the user choose with their editor's  
> tab width setting? That's what it's for.

Sure, that's what it's for, but it doesn't work. Go look around at  
the current source. Sure, it's mostly tabs, but I routinely run into  
spaces mixed among the tabs and it causes indentation problems.

There's a reason that software projects often standardize their  
coding style, including spacing conventions.

-- 
Kevin Ballard
http://kevin.sb.org
eridius at macports.org
http://www.tildesoft.com


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