Tabs -vs- Spaces: Tabs should have won.

[rantingrick]

On Jul 17, 4:49 am, "Anders J. Munch" <2... at jmunch.dk> wrote:

> Originally, tabs were a navigation device: When you press the tab key, you skip
> ahead to the next tab column.  The notion that whitespace characters are
> inserted into the text would have been very alien to someone using text
> processing software anno 1970.  Same thing with space and enter; on typewriters
> the space bar doesn't "type" anything onto the paper, it moves to the next
> column, and that thinking carried over to computers.

And how much longer are we going to live in the past? Who cares about
backward compatible tabs. Mandate the four space tab now! Mandate that
Python takes four space and four space only! We shall lead the charge
for universal tab unity in all programming languages.

How long are you going to accept this multiplicity? It's ridiculous.

> The reason the tab stop is a full 8 positions: for faster navigation.  If it
> were 3 positions, it would take forever to skip from the start of line to column
> 60.  You'd appreciate that, if you were e.g. writing a fiduciary report with
> some text to the left and two number columns to the right, back in the day
> before spreadsheets and word processor tables.

Just in case you were not aware this the year 2011. Spreadsheets have
been around for a LONG time. Stop living the past.