D H wrote: > > How is that a problem that some editors use 8 columns for tabs and > others use less? So what? > A bigger problem I see is people using only 2 or 3 spaces for indenting. > That makes large amounts of code much less readable. And of course it > is a problem if you mix tabs and spaces at the beginning of the same line. > Tabs are easier to type (one keystroke each) and lead to visually better > results (greater indentation unless you like hitting 8 spaces for each > indent level).
Where does that misconception that 2-3 spaces for indenting makes things less readable come from? There was an article in Comm. of the ACM on research into readability back in 1984 or so, that indicated 2-4 spaces has very similar readability and 8 spaces significantly less than that. IIRC they took care of personal preferences/what one was used to in the research. So disallowing tabs which could be set to 8 spaces (positions?) does make sense to me. I switched from using 2 to using 4 spaces for Python recently, and the big pain was to deal with lines that no longer fitted in 80 columns :-( -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
