Imposed indentation standards don't work

Peter Desnoyers desnoyer at Apple.COM
Wed Jan 4 12:19:38 AEST 1989


On the subject of tabs vs. spaces:

In some environments (e.g. MPW on the Macintosh) tab size is an
attribute of a file. It is perfectly reasonable to use a tab-stop of
four in this case, as it will be accepted by any editor as well as the
printer. 

On Unix and some other systems, tab size is not inherent in a file,
but rather in options/commands to the various editing, viewing, and
printing utilities used with it. In addition, some of these utilities
(lpr) may only understand 8-space tabs. All in all, the best solution
under Unix is probably to use a tab-stop of 8, regardless of how many
spaces you indent. (What? your editor doesn't indent for you and you
have to type those spaces by hand?!)

				Peter Desnoyers



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