Who are the "spacists"?
jladasky at itu.edu
jladasky at itu.edu
Mon Mar 20 13:05:54 EDT 2017
On Sunday, March 19, 2017 at 1:11:45 PM UTC-7, Mikhail V wrote:
> Trying to line up things after a non-whitespace character, e.g. like this?
>
> myList = [
> ["a", "b", "c"],
> ["mess up your alignment", "b", "c"],
> ["a", "b", "c"]
> ]
>
> Well there is no easy solution possible, especially if you want it
> to look exactly the same on all computers and editors.
> Before something like elastic tabstops will be a standard,
> it will continue to confuse people.
> Spaces are still one of the worst solutions, although it will
> give same results on monospaced editors.
This is a good example of exactly WHY I continue to write code using monospaced fonts, and spaces for indentation. The results are unambiguous. If I want vertical alignment between specific characters in different rows, I can have it. I am not only interested in the indentation of the first character in a line of code. Yes, sometimes I have to adjust the spacing manually, but I can live with that.
Now, my word-processing documents make full use of styles, and in that context I've transcended tabs completely. For casual documents I might find myself falling back into the email-like habit of pushing "Enter" twice between paragraphs. But when it's time to get serious, I define an appropriate paragraph style.
I have read about elastic tabstops. If they become a standard and address my needs (it looks like they should), I will be happy to switch.
If you want to make your head spin, investigate how to represent polyphonic musical notation in a data structure that ensures it will be drawn accurately on staff paper, as well as played correctly by a synthesizer. Code is child's play by comparison.
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