Using tabs instead of spaces in IDLE?

[Tom Bryan]

Tim Peters wrote:

> [Tom Bryan]
>> Is there a way to use tabs exclusively for indentation in IDLE?
> 
> Yes, provided you're happy with indentwidth==8.

:-P
 
>> Basically, I'd like tabwidth to equal identwidth while permitting
>> developers to adjust the indentwidth.
> 
> You're out of luck there, if they want anything other than 8 for both.

That's what I was afraid of.  I think that Jython could do good things for 
my group at work, but I really don't look forward to the stupid whitespace 
discussions.  It's bad enough on c.l.py.  I can't wait to hear it in person.
 
>>  I see that AutoIndent.py says
[...snip...]
>> But I don't quite understand that explanation.
> 
> Don't be so timid <wink>:  change the code and see what happens.  

I did.  I changed it to 4 and 4.  I toggled tabs on in Idle.  It seemed to 
work on my Linux box. 

> meaning of the comment will soon become painfully clear.  Have you ever
> used a word processor (as opposed to a text editor)?  Tk switches to "word
> processor" tabs when you change its default tab setting.

Ick.  So the tabs will depend on the font, etc.?

>> ...
>> It doesn't look like IDLE is friendly to that type of customization.
> 
> Not exactly:  the Tk text widget is the hangup here.  IDLE's autoindent
> code is shared by PythonWin, which latter, being based on the Scintilla
> text widget, doesn't suffer the same tab surprises.

Hm.  PythonWin might be a good option.  The UNIX heads will probably just 
use vi and Emacs, which I think we can handle.  The current "approved" 
coding style for all languages in the group is supposed to be "always 
indent with leading tabs; for alignment purposes, tabs should be viewed as 
4 spaces; set your visual display of tabs to whatever you prefer."  
 
>> I know that emacs is.  I'm currently investigating the other editors
>> that my team uses, such as CodeWright.
> 
> CodeWright won't be a problem.  But stick to IDLE's default (== the Emacs
> python-mode default), and no editor anywhere will be a real problem.

I would, but then we've got spaces in some languages and tabs in others.  
And I dread the discussion of how many spaces one level of indentation 
should be even more than I dread the whitespace-delimited-blocks whining.

I've already been coding some samples with 

(defun my-python-mode-hook ()
  (setq tab-width 4)
  (setq indent-tabs-mode t)
  )
(add-hook 'python-mode-hook 'my-python-mode-hook)  

It's stupid, but the whitespace issue is probably going to be one of the 
biggest obtacles to introducing Jython to my co-workers.  I'll be back to 
tell everyone how it goes.

I-just-hope-no-one-mentions-the-alien-whitespace-eating-nanovirus-ly y'rs,
---Tom