On Sat, Mar 31, 2001 at 10:27:39AM -0600, will trillich wrote: > On Sat, Mar 31, 2001 at 03:42:13PM +0100, Colin Watson wrote: > > will trillich <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > >it's trivial to set > > > > > > :set ts=4 > > > > > >to have VI (vim) use every fourth console column for a tab stop, > > >but displaying things via LESS or MUTT, everything is still at 8 > > >chars. > > > > > >is there a way to set TABS=4 globally? (badly-behaved programs > > >may hardwire it into their code, but who, using debian, condones > > >badly-behaved code? :) > > > > I've always much preferred leaving tabs at 8 spaces (the one true tab > > width), and setting softtabstop (sts) to 4 in vim (possibly shiftwidth > > as well). That way you get 4-space tabs to all intents and purposes > > while editing but you save files in such a way that other programs read > > them as they were intended to look. > > since figuring out that it's possible to change tab width, i've > wanted to find the guy who set it at 8, hunt him down and hurt > his dog. > > for hierarchical indentation, 8 is ridiculous, and sending four > spaces to do the job of one tab -- times how-many-lines-are-in- > your-source-code -- is for the birds. if you're bound and > determined to have a huge source code file, then comment the hell > out of it. > > three or four is my limit, for tabs.
Yea, 8 seems a bit wide for programs. Here's what I often put in my source files for vim. /* vim: set softtabstop=4 shiftwidth=4 expandtab: */ Basically, you end up with a file that has spaces instead of tabs due to the expandtab directive. -- Eric G. Miller <egm2@jps.net>