[Freeciv-Dev] Re: coding standard patch

[Ben Webb <ben@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Sep 20, 2002 at 11:04:27AM +0000, Per I. Mathisen wrote:
> I'm against tabs. They can be nice if used properly, but I find that to be
> mostly a theoretical perspective, since most of the time they just screw
> things up. Like viewing the source code in a browser - too many tabs and
> you need a 21" in 1600x1400 to see any of it, or (heavens forbid) scroll
> to the right. There is also always someone who doesn't use the correct tab
> size, and tabs also screw up indentation when reading diffs (the new
> indentation looks wrong).

        Not only do tabs make diffs "look wrong", they make it very hard
to edit diffs by hand. As somebody that maintains several large patches
against Freeciv CVS, I often have to make small changes to the context
to get them to apply, and it's quite hard to guess the right number of
tabs (whereas spaces are easy). It makes cut and paste pretty tricky too.

        Ben
-- 
ben@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx           http://bellatrix.pcl.ox.ac.uk/~ben/
"Use the force, Luke."
        - Obi Wan Kenobi, 'Star Wars', 1977