Re: Tabulation symbols not allowed
To my previous post: that would break visual code alignment if tabs are used for such alignment inside lines of code, not at beginning; tabs should be replaced there by variable number of spaces. Yet someone can use literal tabs inside strings (though mostly escape sequences are used), so the filter should avoid them. So a separate filter is needed.
Re: Tabulation symbols not allowed
But it works already with `#? replace(sub="\t",by=" ")`.
Re: Tabulation symbols not allowed
For existing libraries you can transform the input on load and transform it back on save. Not particularly elegant, but gives you lots of freedom and also solves other issues (like stripping trailing whitespace).
Re: Tabulation symbols not allowed
Allowing tabs means "allowing mixed" because TABs are what the are. They are not "4 spaces in the package of one `\t`" they are meant as stops at fixed positions starting from 0 and if you use a Tabstop of 4 and you use indentation of 2 you will have 1 tab and two spaces in front of your text at indent level 3. Allowing `\t` to let uses choose how their indentation width is, makes probably sense if you only allow tabs and no spaces but not if you allow both (mixed or not). So if you really want to allow tabs the Nim compiler needs to know the tab width intended to be used. This would complicate the parser I guess but would be possible as preprocessor which converts the given tab size to spaces before continuing with compilation. That would be even transparent imho (as for example the columns position would stay the same for error reporting). To me this boils down that there could be a source-code-filter which gets a tab-size and does the correct tab transformation on the source. This way everybody who wants can use tabs in his sources and Nim itself does not need to change anything besides the inclusion of such filter. I guess a PR would maybe go through :)
Re: Tabulation symbols not allowed
Yes, for your example you are right. I have never done such type of alignment myself in my code, but indeed there seems to exist people who like that. Indeed for that type of alignment proportional fonts do not work. Really a nice example. > Indent width can always be freely rendered Yes, with your NimEdit :) For closed source editors that may be possible or not. And for Open Source code, we may have to patch the code for our personal use. For example for GtkSourceView all developers seems to be retired, so there is currently no chance for extensions -- I do not think that my own patched would be accepted. (I recently asked GTK people about indent marks as you have in your NimEdit, or about smart line wrapping. No reaction unfortunately.)
Re: Tabulation symbols not allowed
> And no one wants to allow mixing.
Mixing always happens (and is in fact what you're arguing for):
proc outer =
# indentation:
proc foo(x, y: string,
z: int) = # ind+alignment of 'z' to be on the same column as '('
# indentation again
> There is one big advantage of tabs: Indent width can be freely configured,
> without the need to modify the source code itself.
Indent width can always be freely _rendered_ because that's what text editors
do, they render a stream of bytes. Byte 9 has no inherent advantage over a
series of byte 32. The only advantage arises when you use clearly distinguish
between indentation and alignment and use different bytes for these. Which is
not user friendly because it means you make the human being perform this
distinction all the time so that your computer program can remain simple.
Re: Tabulation symbols not allowed
> The big problem I've had with tabs was in team programming, But there is no problem, as long as tabs and spaces are not mixed for indentation purpose in a single file. And no one wants to allow mixing. There is one big advantage of tabs: Indent width can be freely configured, without the need to modify the source code itself. And spaces can be very tiny for some proportional fonts, so that the default 2 spaces per indent step are too small, so I use 3 or four spaces per step, which is again large for people with other fonts. Forbidding tabs is a very strong restriction for our freedom. But there is one reason why I am currently willing to accept it -- github makes tabs equal to 8 spaces, so for github hosted files I would have to replace my tabs to spaces anyway.
Re: Tabulation symbols not allowed
> But forbidding tabs I don't like. You stated you use gedit, which handles indentation (via the tab key) with either spaces or tabs, and that is very simple to configure. Most decent editors have this feature. For me I prefer Nim not allowing tabs. I don't see the point of having tabs used for indentation in the source code when just about every editor out there can be configured to indent with spaces via the tab key. The big problem I've had with tabs was in team programming, where some preferred tabs, and other's spaces (via the tab key). It was a big mess. We ended up just banning tabs all together and agreeing on how many indent spaces would be used. Anyways, "tabs vs spaces" is one of those continual ongoing computer holy wars for well over 15 years. Just do a web search on it. I've been programming for over 30 years. In my opinion tabs not being allowed in Nim source code is a very good thing. They are totally unnecessary and have no real added value (in my opinion). Tab characters can appear in strings in nim, just not for indentation. > When i write code in text editor, the indentation with two spaces is little > noticeable, the indentation with more spaces is more noticeable, but if i > need 3 or more levels of indentation, writing 12 spaces takes too much time. That makes no sense. Just configure your tab key to indent with spaces, not tab characters.
Re: Tabulation symbols not allowed
> With proportional fonts unfortunately 2 spaces generate a tiny indent step. > So I have to use 3 or 4 spaces, or finally a tab! I think I will do the later > with the replace command mentioned above. The only disadvantage is that > github puts 8 spaces for each tab, so I have to convert files before > uploading to github. I use fixed width fonts only for convenience of reading (and then, because they were installed by default) (I use default fonts because this is not important for me). You can use any, which you want. But forbidding tabs I don't like. It's bad idea, as I think. It's not difficult to allow them in the source code of Nim's compiler. Compilerlanguage is instrument for every humangroup of people, so, as I think, everybody can choose one, which is most convenient for himthem.
