Re: [Ocaml-lib-devel] Indentation

[Brian H. <bh...@sp...>]

On Tue, 22 Apr 2003, Nicolas Cannasse wrote:

> > Mixed spaces and tabs are bad.  Let us pick one, and stick with it.  My
> > preference is for spaces, but I'll work with tabs.
> 
> I know that the 4-chars-tabs I'm using are not so good, but it's quite
> difficult for me to start using spaces, since my MSVC editior doesn't allow
> the tab-as-spaces key. so right now I'ld prefer that we stick to tabs :-) We
> can still sed files later one finalized for a clean source release.

I'll handle tabs.  And tabs have the advantage that we don't need to fight 
over what level of indentation to use- set tabstops to whatever the heck 
you like.

It's *mixing* tabs and spaces which is the problem.  Even worse, as
microsoft and unix have different philosphies on how tabs work.  A tab in
unix moves you to the next column to the right whose number is a multiple
of tabstop, while in windows it moves you right tabstop columns.  So if 
you have the sequence "\t \t" at the begining of a line, with a tabstop of 
4, in unix you are in column 8 (the second tab only moves you three 
columns, not 4), while in windows you are in column 9.

If you have several people editing the file, some in unix and some in 
windows, some using tabs and some using spaces, and (of course) everyone 
using different tabstops, indenting become a nightmare.

Brian