Spaces and tabs again

[John Machin]

Paul Watson wrote:
> John Machin wrote:
> 
>> Paul Watson wrote:
>>
>>> Dan Sommers wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Sun, 14 Aug 2005 01:04:04 GMT,
>>>> Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfraed at ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> On 13 Aug 2005 13:18:21 -0700, sigzero at gmail.com declaimed the 
>>>>> following
>>>>> in comp.lang.python:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>> Are you kidding? You are going to MANDATE spaces?
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>     After the backlash, Python 4.0 will ban leading spaces and require
>>>>> tabs <G>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Why not petition the unicode people to include PYTHON INDENT and PYTHON
>>>> DEDENT code points, and leave the display up to the text editors?  ;-)
>>>>
>>>> Regards,
>>>> Dan
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> The Unicode people will correctly point out that there is already a 
>>> Unicode codepoint assignment which can be used for this purpose.  It 
>>> is even in the BMP portion of the C0 controls group.
>>>
>>>     0009 = HORIZONTAL TABULATION
>>
>>
>>
>> and how do you use this to get the DEDENT effect? Use something out of 
>> the bidirectional kit? E.g. RLO then tab then PDF ;-)
> 
> 
> The use of one less HORIZONTAL TABULATION on a line in relation to the 
> number of HORIZONTAL TABULATION codepoints used by the pervious line 
> indicated "dedent" as you call it. :-)
> 
> There are things about your suggestion that would be great!  It would 
> require a language aware editing tool to be used.  Like HTML was 
> intended, the rendering of the program source would be managed by the 
> tool.  Everyone could choose the style in which they would like to 
> interact with the code.
> 
> This is also the biggest problem.  It would mean that a specialized 
> editor tool would be required.  One could not just use a POTE (Plain Old 
> Text Editor).
> 
> Using U+0009 HORIZONTAL TABULATION would provide both user selectable 
> rendering style as well as access through most existing tools.
> 
> Of course, there is always 'expand' and 'unexpand' if you are really 
> desparate.

OK Paul, you've convinced me. I look forward to your PEP "Mandated 
U+0009 HORIZONTAL TABULATION in Python source".
Cheers,
John