Date: Sat, 22 Jan 2000 15:18:08 +0800 From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> To: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> Cc: keramida@ceid.upatras.gr, "Matthew D. Fuller" <fullermd@futuresouth.com>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Pico, indentation (was: Re: The 3.4-STABLE sources ...) Message-ID: <20000122151808.F390@mojave.worldwide.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <200001220138.SAA25380@usr09.primenet.com>; from tlambert@primenet.com on Sat, Jan 22, 2000 at 01:38:12AM %2B0000 References: <20000121224739.J918@mojave.worldwide.lemis.com> <200001220138.SAA25380@usr09.primenet.com>
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On Saturday, 22 January 2000 at 1:38:12 +0000, Terry Lambert wrote: >> I think both these statements miss the obvious point: clarity of style >> depends on the medium available. style(9) still uses an IBM 029 card >> punch with an 8 step tab on the program drum. This makes it difficult >> to express yourself clearly. > > Works great on my old HeathKit terminal with hard wired, > unprogrammable 8 character tab stops. > > If you are concerned about space, use real tabs. If you are > concerned about format, then make your editor only put in real tabs > on 8 column boundaries, and have the tab key output however many > spaces you want it to, converting sequences of 8 spaces preceeding > an 8 column modular boundary to tabs, retroactively. I think you're off on a tangent. My real issue was the layout on the page, not whether it was represented using tab characters or spaces. Recall that on a punched card there is no tab character; the tab is on the program card, which just tells the punch how many positions on the card to skip. > BTW, "vi" can do this trivially by choosing the right settings, > though if you believed it were: > > set tabstop=2 That's a value I like. But it does not agree with style(9). > Realize that the tab key on computer terminals was invented for > columnar sensitive languages, like FORTRAN and COBOL and some of the > original varieties of BASIC, etc.. The typewriter usage of the tab > key only crept in later, when word processing was invented. I'm not sure that's correct. They seem to be two disparate cultures. ASCII came from telegraphy, and the cards came from data processing. They seem to have merged some time in the 50's or 60's of the last century. > If you want to word process, then do it. If you want to write code, > do that. Thanks. I shall :-) Greg -- Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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