> a tab is expanded to 8 spaces No it isn't. It is expanded with enough whitespace to reach the next column that is a multiple of eight columns. A tab width of eight columns is the historical norm and the de facto standard in most of the open source world. Unfortunately, for some weird reason, in the Windows world a tab width of four is more common.
Whether there actually are any "spaces" involved, or just positioning of text on a freely addressable surface, is another question... And of course, I assume a fixed-width "console" or "typewriter" style font is used. > when pasting tab-indented source code > my screen is often too small and I would rather have a smaller tab-width > (2 or 4). You mean code somebody else has written? Surely if you have some source code or whatever text with a specific intended relative indentation and alignment of text elements on different lines that contains hardcoded TAB characters, that was created using a tab width of eight columns, displaying the text with some other tab width will make all the indentation and alignment appear broken. Only in the special case of *all* lines being indented with some amount of leading TABs *only* (i.e. no spaces intermixed with the TABs), and no TABs used in the middle of the lines, would it work to use arbitrary tab widths. But such source code is quite rare to find. In fact, many open source projects ban TAB characters in the source code, exactly because various people are using environments with varying tab widths. --tml _______________________________________________ evolution-list mailing list evolution-list@gnome.org To change your list options or unsubscribe, visit ... http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/evolution-list
