tabs do WHAT?

[seanb at home.com]

On 23 Jan, Tim Peters wrote:
> [Warren Postma]
>> Let's see how many languages I have run into that make
>> whitespace and/or tabs important:
> 
> Whitespace?  Now *that's* a novel topic c.l.py hasn't seen enough of lately
> <wink>.
> 
>> ...
>> As an embedded language, Python needs to be usable beyond the
>> ivory towers where functional programming or object oriented
>> programming or metaclasses are fodder for discussion.
> 
> Python didn't come from an ivory tower, and indeed even Perl may be more
> heavily used in those fabled lands.
> 
>> Python looked eminently useable by non-programmers until I found
>> out that whitespace was meaningful.  Try to explain scope to
>> someone who doesn't write programs for a living.
> 
> This one is ironic:  Python's treatment of block structure came from formal
> usability studies (conducted with the ABC language), using subjects who
> indeed didn't write programs for a living.  "Introductory colon +
> indentation" is what worked best -- they tried the others too.  See recent
> msgs in DejaNews for more about that.
> 
>> ...
>> Has anyone built a version of Python that totally ignores
>> tabs and whitespace,
> 
> Yes, a patch for that was posted many years ago; it didn't catch on.
> 
>> or a filter that you can use on top of Python?
> 
> See Tools/Scripts/pindent.py in the std distribution.
> 
> although-i'm-not-sure-it's-ever-been-run<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim
> 
> 
> 
Out of curiosity, are there any online copies of these usability studies
that were so formative to pythone?  Such studies might make interesting
reading and some people may have more trust in the results of a study
they could examine online.

Failing online access, is there any public access to write-ups of these
studies?
-- 
Sean Blakey
(206)297-7123
quine = ['print "quine =",quine,"; exec(quine[0])"']; exec(quine[0])