[OT] Spaces/tabs (Was: simple display (from: GUI library for D))

[Walter Bright]

On 4/10/2011 10:58 PM, Daniel Gibson wrote:
> Am 11.04.2011 07:51, schrieb Jonathan M Davis:
>> Yes. Phobos follows the convention of indenting with spaces and that levels of
>> indentation are 4 spaces. So, anything which goes into Phobos needs to follow
>> this convention.
>>
>> the only way that tabs work is if you use them consistently, which in my
>> experience almost never happens.
>
> How can people mess that up?

In the beginning, God created tabs. Tab stops were 8 spaces. That was engraved 
in tty and printer hardware, and there was nothing any user could do about it. 
And it was good, and there was peace in the land.

But then in the 80's satan thought that it would be a good idea to make tabs 
user settable (soft tabs) in his text editor. Various demons and trolls thought 
this was a fab idea, and propagated it to every text editor.

Unfortunately, text files have no way to specify the tab size expected by the 
text. Conventions were proffered, noobs were sacrificed, and hymns sung, but 
nobody could ever agree on what the tab size should be. Bikeshed wars raged and 
devastated the land.

Hence, the use of tabs was utterly, totally and perpetually ruined for everyone. 
And satan laughed at the folly of programmers.