tabs do WHAT?

[Tim Peters]

[Warren Postma]
> If Guido reads this, please note my personal feature request
> for Python 2.0:  Make the "whitespace" stuff optional, for
> people who like weird syntactical features only. I'll love]
> you forever. Thanks.

[Thomas Hamelryck]
> This will not happen.

Good bet.

> People here (including Guido Himself) get extremely picky
> when the use of indentation is criticised.

Guido hasn't responded one way or the other to indentation criticism in
years, and I doubt you'll find one of his old responses being "extremely
picky" either (unbending, yes, but conviction isn't pickiness).

> They do not realize that this feature is an important obstacle
> for many people

Neither is Guido an idiot <0.9 wink>.  Of *course* he knows it's a
show-stopper for some people.  But so are many other things.  Every language
designer knows this, and the successful ones figure out early there's no
future in trying to make everyone happy.  There is a future in keeping a
language's philosophy consistent for as long as possible, and the use of
indentation to denote block structure wasn't an arbitrary choice in Guido's
view of the world.  He realizes it's an important obstacle; do "they"
realize it's an important manifestation of Python's philosophy?

> (and since these people have stopped using python they are
> obviously not posting here).

Then what keeps this thread going year after year <wink>?

> Indentation is great, but should not be part of the syntax
> of a language.

like-sex-is-great-but-should-not-be-part-of-life-ly y'rs  - tim