Re: coding style

[Jan Engelhardt <jengelh@computergmbh.de>]

On Jun 15 2007 12:45, Kok, Auke wrote:
>> 
>> Well tabs should _never_ be assumed to be 8, and in this regard, as I see it,
>> CodingStyle has a bug. Tabs are there so that the user can set their width
>> according to _their_ taste, simply so that both sides,
>> 
>>  from CodingStyle:
>>  Tabs are 8 characters, and thus indentations are also 8
>>  characters.  There are heretic movements that try to make
>>  indentations 4 (or even 2!) characters deep, and that is akin
>>  to trying to define the value of PI to be 3.
>
> again, this is about *indentation* and not about alignment
>
>> Linus (did he wrote that part?) and the heretics both can have their fun
>> without impacting each other. If we wanted to force the user to have exactly
>> 8 screen blanks, we should use spaces throughout.
>
> Linus was friendly enough to give us permission to use tabs. He forces tabs for
> indentation, but leaves it up to everyone else to (1) set their editor to show
> tabs as 2 or 4 or whatever, and (2) use spaces for alignment.
>
> the bottom line here is that we encourage everyone to use tabs=8, and allow
> some degree of freedom for some people to vary this *AND* have decent looking
> alignment for *EVERYONE* by allowing them to use spaces for alignment.

I'll just say "+1", because that's what I meant.


Blame university for mathematical pickiness:

>>  Tabs are 8 characters, and thus indentations are also 8

is wrong ;-)   --

 *  Tabs _are_ 1 character (use a hex editor and see) and
 *  Tabs _are not always displayed_ as "8 characters"
    [there exists a user for which \t != 8] [not me though]
 *  Tabs _are displayed_ as _much characters as the user specifies_.

(CodingStyle could need a clarification.)



	Jan
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