My whitespace style

[Oliver Fromme]

Matthew D. Fuller wrote:
 > On Wed, Apr 15, 2009 at 10:20:08AM +0300 I heard the voice of
 > Giorgos Keramidas, and lo! it spake thus:
 > > 
 > >         switch (value) {
 > >         case SOME_CONSTANT_NAME:            do_stuff_here();        break;
 > >         case ANOTHER_CONSTANT_NAME:         do_some_other_stuff();  break;
 > >         default:                            default_stuff();        break;
 > >         }
 > 
 >  ^^^^^^^^^                           ^^^^^^^^^
 >   This is                              This is
 >  indentation                          alignment
 > 
 > 
 > > Composite structure initializations also use a style similar to
 > > this, and will almost invariably end up looking horrendously
 > > misformatted when TAB sizes are 'elastic', i.e.:
 > 
 > Only if you abuse tabs for alignment.  Indentation is not alignment.
 > It's a pity that the two get conflated and everybody ends up treating
 > them the same, so that advocating tab indentation is read as
 > advocating tab alignment (even by proponents of tab indentation).

The problem is that many (most? all?) editors cannot easily
be configured to differentiate between them, i.e. insert
literal ASCII tabs characters when the <Tab> key is pressed
for indentation, and insert ASCII spaces when the <Tab> key
is pressed for alignment.  *And* treat the alignment spaces
transparently like tabs, just like the indentation spaces.

That's probably not easy to implement, and it gets really
messy when you edit the line, remove or insert stuff between
the alignment spaces and the indetation tabs and so on.
Then suddenly alignment can become indentation, and vice
versa. The editor would then have to transparently convert
existing ASCII tab characters to spaces or vice versa.
This is a huge can of worms.

That's another good reason to let the old ASCII tab die and
rest in peace (or "lost in space" ...  ok, bad pun).

Best regards
   Oliver

PS:  Don't get me wrong, I'm *not* proposing to change the
style(9) sections dealing with tabs.  Heaven forbid!  ;-)

-- 
Oliver Fromme, secnetix GmbH & Co. KG, Marktplatz 29, 85567 Grafing b. M.
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