[TxMt] Re: Indent size different from tab size

[Jacob Rus]

Curt Sampson wrote:
> 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.

Really? people use 4 spaces for the first tab stop, but a single tab for 
  the second?  I had never heard of that before...

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

Ok, fine.  Changing tab size could be bad, if someone still is using 
some random editor no one has ever heard of, which can't handle any tab 
size other than 8.  So what's the benefit to coding like this instead of 
just using spaces?  Is it just saving a few bytes?

-Jacob