On 17Jul2011 13:09, Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info> wrote: | Cameron Simpson wrote: | > On 16Jul2011 09:51, rantingrick <rantingr...@gmail.com> trolled: | > | Evidence: Tabs ARE superior! | > | -------------------------------------------------- | > | I have begun to believe that tabs are far more superior to spaces | > | > Please Rick: you need at least three things to use the term "more | > superior". With only two, you just have superior. It grates. | | Really? If you just say "superior", how do you know if it's more superior or | less superior?
Neither. We can learn from the sage Dumpty, who writes: `When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.' | > Personally, I prefer spaces to tabs, at least fgor my Python code and | > generally anyway. Why? Well to some extent because I share files with | > another who uses 4 position tabs. Editing these is a real nightmare if | > one uses 8 position tabs (as I do, the common editor/terminal default | > these days). | | I can't fathom why 8 position tabs were *ever* the default, let alone why | they are still the default. Shrug. I imagine it's enough to be useful. An 80 column display gets 8 tab stops (not counting the edges). Personally I find 8 a little more than I would like, but 6 is displeasing and 4 may be frustratingly small for some users. I used to indent in 3s at uni, 5 is odd, 7 is just weird and 2 seems almost not worth the effort. And 1 is taken. Today's lesson is brought to you by the number 37, the lowest arbitrary number. | > For pure indentation you may get sane (if wider that liked) | > results, bit any multicolumn stuff is badly broken by the mismatch. | > | > Personally, I like to use the tab _key_ as an input device, but to have | > my editor write real spaces to the file in consequence. With pure | > spaces, the text is laid out reliably for us both. And so I have my | > editor set to that behaviour. | | I have reluctantly come to do the same thing. There is a plethora of broken | tools out there that don't handle tabs well, and consequently even though | tabs for indentation are objectively better, I use spaces because it is | less worse than the alternative. | | Victory of worse-is-better. Yeah. Worse is at least reliable in this scheme. Cheers, -- Cameron Simpson <c...@zip.com.au> DoD#743 http://www.cskk.ezoshosting.com/cs/ It is time. Awaken, sleepers, for yet another herd of slow moving prey has swept into Peevetown, unaware of the sure fate of the fools that disturb the inhabitants. Shall it be a rending of flesh, and the lamentations of the sorely afflicted, or shall we be buried in a sea of drivel? - Woulffe <shamp...@muddcs.claremont.edu> -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list