Rick Hillegas wrote:
Before injecting a massive singularity into our code archaeology, I
would like to better understand the passionate objection to tabs. Let me
explain my perspective: I use a crude, old-fashioned editor called
emacs. My tabs are configured at 4 space intervals. With this setting, I
almost never have a problem reading the existing code. So who is having
problems and why? Do other people's IDEs silently bulk reformat the
Some files, which have a mix of tabs and spaces, can sometimes become
rather unreadable.
code? Can that behavior be disabled? Could we be satisfied with the
following simple rules, which used to satisfy us nine years ago:
1) Ladies and gentlemen, set your tabs to four spaces.
2) Don't bulk reformat other people's code.
I do not think that is enough, since it does not deal with the problem
of files which have a mix of tabs and spaces.
You could add:
3) A file should be consistent in its use of spaces vs. tabs. If a file
uses spaces for indentation, no tabs are allowed into that file.
The problem with rule 3, is of course that developers need to set up
their tools based on which file they are modifying. It is easier if all
files have the same indentation-style. Therefore I support getting a
well-defined code-format in Derby.
-- Andreas
