[OT] Tabs / Re: [PD-dev] Looks like there's a song position pointer bug

[Miller Puckette]

Just to throw in my own 2 cents...  The Pd sources are: tabs 8 spaces
(their historical value), indentation 4 spaces.  This unfortunately means
that Pd does mix spaces and tabs for indentation.  However, there's no
rule that says that Pd source files have to use tabs at all; the indentation
may be implemented using all spaces.  However, I haven't set my own text
editor to avoid tabs.  Most text editors will at least allow you to set
tab to 8 spaces, although some of them then assume that of course you want to
indent 8 spaces too, which is inappropriate for Pd code, since I also adhere
to a limit of 80 columns.

cheers
Miller

On Sat, Sep 27, 2003 at 09:03:48PM +0200, Frank Barknecht wrote:
> Hallo,
> Larry Troxler hat gesagt: // Larry Troxler wrote:
> 
> > On Saturday 27 September 2003 05:16, Frank Barknecht wrote:
> > > As a tab is just one character and not 8 or 2 or 4, there is no "rule"
> > > on Unix that it is eight spaces normally. The eight character thing is
> > > just the width, some editors like to show a tab.
> ...
> > > In Pd or any C language this is really no problem at all, but I do
> > > program a lot in Python, and here a community project has to agree on
> > > one single indentation/tab style.
> > 
> > Frank, what you're describing is how tab characters are intended to be used. 
> > The problem is that all too often, they are used incorrectly; sometimes both 
> > tabs and spaces are used for indentation, or a tab character is used to 
> > indent to a specific character position. In these cases, I'm forced to try 
> > different tab spacings until I find the "right" one. 
> 
> Ah, okay. Now I understand. So the tabs aren't the problem, the mixing
> of tabs and spaces is, because everyone and their sisters use
> differnet expansion widths. 
> 
> Well, in Python, this is a real problem, that's why Python projects 
> often have  a style guide re. tabs, for example Webware has it here:
> http://webware.sf.net/Webware-0.8.1/Docs/StyleGuidelines.html
> 
> Webware has nice rules, IMO, which are: 
> 
>  Spaces are not used for indentation.
>   
>   The real problem is mixing tabs and spaces for indentation as people
>   have their tabs set to different widths (commonly 4 or 8). Tabs have
>   been chosen because they're convenient, efficient and fast to cursor
>   through.
> 
>  Tabs are not used past initial indentation.
>   
>   To avoid alignment problems between people who have tabs set to
>   different widths.  A common use of tabs is to align the values of a
>   dictionary or the right hand sides of several consecutive assignment
>   statements. There is no problem when using tabs for indentation, but
>   when they are used past non-tab characters, the alignment will be
>   skewed when the tab width is changed (e.g., when a different developer
>   with a different tab width views the code).
> 
> 
> In C it's more a cosmetic issue. CVS I think doesn't do anything about
> it: spaces stay spaces and tabs are tabs in the repository.
> 
> ciao
> -- 
>  Frank Barknecht                               _ ______footils.org__
> 
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