On Mon, Mar 20, 2017 at 10:55 AM, Steve D'Aprano <steve+pyt...@pearwood.info> wrote: > Oh, that's a law of physics is it? "8 columns per tab" is one of the > fundamental mathematical or physical constants baked into the nature of > reality, like > > π ≈ 3.14159... > e ≈ 2.71828... > Feigenbaum constant δ ≈ 4.66920... > gravitational constant G ≈ 6.673e-11 N m**2 kg**-2 > fine structure constant α ≈ 7.297351e-3 > > etc. And here I was, in my ignorance, thinking that it was a mere > convention, something that could trivially be made a config option for > those tools which actually needed it: > > --tabwidth=4 > > But I guess that's just as silly as redefining π as 3 exactly.
Yes. Actually, all of those constants are themselves defined in terms of the width of a tab; if you change a tab to be seven spaces, e would become 2.3785. That's just how the world works. Actually, when I first met tabs, they were defined in centimeters. Aside from the fact that they really should have been defined in millimeters, I fully support that broad concept. (And they weren't defined as "every 2.5 cm" necessarily; the default was for them to repeat, but if you wanted, you could have them at 2.5, then 5.0, then 6.0, then 9.0, etc, etc, etc.) ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
