Re: Request For Comments: 3-space indentation style

[Craig Barnes <craigbarnes85@...>]

On 6 January 2014 21:27, William Ahern wrote:
> If you use tabs for indentation and spaces for alignment, then your tab stop
> is inconsequential. No matter your tab stop, anything you align within an
> indented block will stay aligned.

Yes, you keep saying that, but it's just not true.

> Indentation always comes on the left-hand side. Anything you align inside of
> a block will always have the same number of tabs, and will always shift
> right or left as one block. It will all remain aligned correctly.

A specific block may always have the same number of tabs, but what
about when you want to align something not just constrained to one
block? Line comments in a nested table are one example -- but there
are countless other real-world examples out there.

Try this example with a tab stop of 8/4/3/2:

   http://cra.igbarn.es/tabs.lua

You can invent all kinds of specious limitations, but the only way to
freely align things and have it work in other people's editors is to
avoid using tabs.