"Hasan Aljudy" <hasan.aljudy@gmail.com> wrote in message news:dv83h7$1op3$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> Good point.
> I say the clurpit is the evil tab character, it should be removed from all
> computer systems in the world!! :P
> The "Tab" keyboard button should just be a `macro` for 4 spaces, not a
> separate character!!

I take personal offense at that.

;)

I will use hard tabs till the day I die.  You will have to pry my tab key from my cold, dead hands.

Jarrett Billingsley wrote:
> "Hasan Aljudy" <hasan.aljudy@gmail.com> wrote in message news:dv83h7$1op3$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> 
>>Good point.
>>I say the clurpit is the evil tab character, it should be removed from all computer systems in the world!! :P
>>The "Tab" keyboard button should just be a `macro` for 4 spaces, not a separate character!!
> 
> 
> I take personal offense at that.
> 
> ;)
> 
> I will use hard tabs till the day I die.  You will have to pry my tab key from my cold, dead hands. 
> 
> 

:P

Stick to the tab key all you want. I want to kill the ascii code for the "so called" tab character!!

"Hasan Aljudy" <hasan.aljudy@gmail.com> wrote in message news:dv84il$1q3l$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> Stick to the tab key all you want. I want to kill the ascii code for the "so called" tab character!!

I never understood this whole hard-tab-hating stuff.  Everything lines up on nice neat columns, they can be set to whatever width you want, and it's much quicker to move through them using the arrow keys.  What's so great about spaces?

It's an interesting article with some quotable tidbits, but that the author ended by praising Ruby with such enthusiasm made me skeptical of his earlier claims.  I also thought it was a bit odd that his section on Lisp was really a section on Emacs.  About the only conclusion I could draw is that "Emacs is awesome and the tool of uber gurus, and Emacs is tightly integrated with Lisp, therefore Lisp is uber cool but also only for uber-gurus."  And even that's a stretch.


Sean

Jarrett Billingsley wrote:
> "Hasan Aljudy" <hasan.aljudy@gmail.com> wrote in message news:dv84il$1q3l$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> 
>>Stick to the tab key all you want. I want to kill the ascii code for the "so called" tab character!!
> 
> 
> I never understood this whole hard-tab-hating stuff.  Everything lines up on nice neat columns, they can be set to whatever width you want, and it's much quicker to move through them using the arrow keys.  What's so great about spaces? 
> 
> 

Tabs are a bit inconsistent.

They are, as you say, a bit costumizable, but the result is that they're also not "portable"!
They aren't reliable for text layout. When you write a piece of code that uses tabs and try to insert it in forums (I mean real forums, not NGs), they won't always look like what you expect.

Plus the python problem mentioned above!

I think "tabbing" is a kind of a high level concept, shouldn't be implemented in ascii. Just like "bold", "italics", and "underline" aren't implemented in ascii.

Jarrett Billingsley wrote:
> "Hasan Aljudy" <hasan.aljudy@gmail.com> wrote in message news:dv84il$1q3l$1@digitaldaemon.com...
>> Stick to the tab key all you want. I want to kill the ascii code for the "so called" tab character!!
> 
> I never understood this whole hard-tab-hating stuff.  Everything lines up on nice neat columns, they can be set to whatever width you want, and it's much quicker to move through them using the arrow keys.  What's so great about spaces? 

Look at some code that was written with different tab settings from yours.  Now have someone else who uses the "tabs to spaces" setting make some changes and look at it again.  Things get jumbled enough if people only indent standard code lines, but if they're trying to line up declarations or functions parameters or whatever as well, this process can quickly produce unreadable formatting.


Sean

Sean Kelly wrote:
> It's an interesting article with some quotable tidbits, but that the author ended by praising Ruby with such enthusiasm made me skeptical of his earlier claims.  I also thought it was a bit odd that his section on Lisp was really a section on Emacs.  About the only conclusion I could draw is that "Emacs is awesome and the tool of uber gurus, and Emacs is tightly integrated with Lisp, therefore Lisp is uber cool but also only for uber-gurus."  And even that's a stretch.
> 
> 
> Sean

Emacs is extremely difficult to grok for someone brought up in the RAD era.

It gives me a headache trying to use it "like a guru"

:-P

Same here.

It allows me to work with other developers who have different opinions on what size a tab should be.  I can't understand why people hate it so much, except that they want things to look exactly like *they* like them.

-[Unknown]


> "Hasan Aljudy" <hasan.aljudy@gmail.com> wrote in message news:dv83h7$1op3$1@digitaldaemon.com...
>> Good point.
>> I say the clurpit is the evil tab character, it should be removed from all computer systems in the world!! :P
>> The "Tab" keyboard button should just be a `macro` for 4 spaces, not a separate character!!
> 
> I take personal offense at that.
> 
> ;)
> 
> I will use hard tabs till the day I die.  You will have to pry my tab key from my cold, dead hands. 
> 
> 

That's only because they are used inconsistently.  The general rule is that tabs should never be used after a non-tab character on a line. Bam, instant portability and everyone gets their own tab size.

It's the crazies that try to indent equal signs with tabs that give hard tabs a bad name.  That should be spaces because you're lining up characters, not indenting.

Plus I like my files slightly smaller.  I checked once, and at 4 spaces to a tab I save a surprising amount of space.  This is probably because I'm a prude about one statement per line and such.

As for forums, being that I wrote forum software previously, I can tell you with some assurity that this is only caused by using crappy forum software.  The software I was involved with supported tabs just fine, and I used them in the code examples I posted with it.

Tabbing is elementary.  I don't bold parts of my code.  No one complains about language Z requiring thing X to be italic.

-[Unknown]


> Jarrett Billingsley wrote:
>> "Hasan Aljudy" <hasan.aljudy@gmail.com> wrote in message news:dv84il$1q3l$1@digitaldaemon.com...
>>
>>> Stick to the tab key all you want. I want to kill the ascii code for the "so called" tab character!!
>>
>>
>> I never understood this whole hard-tab-hating stuff.  Everything lines up on nice neat columns, they can be set to whatever width you want, and it's much quicker to move through them using the arrow keys.  What's so great about spaces?
>>
> 
> Tabs are a bit inconsistent.
> 
> They are, as you say, a bit costumizable, but the result is that they're also not "portable"!
> They aren't reliable for text layout. When you write a piece of code that uses tabs and try to insert it in forums (I mean real forums, not NGs), they won't always look like what you expect.
> 
> Plus the python problem mentioned above!
> 
> I think "tabbing" is a kind of a high level concept, shouldn't be implemented in ascii. Just like "bold", "italics", and "underline" aren't implemented in ascii.

Unknown W. Brackets wrote:
> That's only because they are used inconsistently.  The general rule is that tabs should never be used after a non-tab character on a line. Bam, instant portability and everyone gets their own tab size.

That's a good rule, but you also need to make sure that lines with tab indentation aren't being mixed with lines with space indentation. Most editors don't enforce this, but it ought to be solvable. The problem with tabs might simply be that so many text editors don't handle them correctly.