On 2/7/2010 7:39 AM, Steve Holden wrote:
Clearly written by someone who has never *used* a mechanical typewriter.
The original mechanisms had "tab set" and "tab clear" keys, so you had
variable tabbing according to the needs of the particular document you
were working on. Look under "T" in
http://www.mytypewriter.com/explorelearn/glossary.html
if you aren't old enough to have used one.
I did start with real typewriters. The 'standard', if anything, was 1/2"
for paragraph indents. That was 5 chars with normal 10 cpi type, 6 with
12 cpi 'elite' type. I used both. I always thought the 8 char unix
indent to be excessive. If a power of 2 was needed, rounding 5 down to 4
would have been more sensible.
Wordperfect, which I wrote a couple of books with, followed the
typewriter model in defaulting tab stops to every 1/2 inch, regardless
of font. Sensible software tab defaults were not pioneered by Microsoft.
Terry Jan Reedy
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