[TxMt] Re: Indent size different from tab size

[Curt Sampson]

Jacob Rus <jrus at ...> writes:

 
> No there isn't.  And this is a truly wacky convention from emacs?

It's not just emacs; this is very common in vi as well.

There are two major issues with changing the tab size from 8 columns:

1. There's no standard for carrying the tab size around with the file. Given any
file, there's no way to tell if it uses 8 or 4 column tabs without manually
inspecting it.

2. Changing tab sizes to change indent doesn't work because often tabs are
used at the end of a line to line things up:

  SOME_THING = 'un'           # one
  OTHER_THING = 'deux'        # two
  YET_ANOTHER_THING = 'trois' # three

(That probably won't line up if you're reading this in a proportional typeface,
but you get the idea.)

In this situation, if you're not using the original coders tab size, you end up
with the stuff at the right-hand not lining up.

The ability to have separate indent widths and tab columns is a standard feature
of every programmer's editor I've ever seen, with the exception of TextMate. I
don't understand why you guys don't just add the darn thing and be done with it.

cjs