Re: On Tabs and Spaces

From: Tom Tobin <korpios@korpios.com>
Date: Oct 17, 2007, 18:25 UTC
Message-ID: <1192645509.6640.21.camel@athena>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.LFD.0.999.0710170849590.26902@woody.linux-foundation.org>

On Wed, 2007-10-17 at 08:53 -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:

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> 
> On Wed, 17 Oct 2007, Luke Lu wrote:
> > 
> > Well, we just established that all-space is perfect, look-wise.
> 
> But we also established that an all-space model is not stable, because any 
> unix developers will start adding tabs instead of spaces.

Damn unix developers!  They just can't be controlled!

... seriously now. You're trying on one hand to enforce a particular indentation rule (use tabs for indentations, assume tabs are 8 characters wide, use spaces for partial indentation) — which assumes unix developers *can* follow a project's rules for coding style — and yet you're arguing *against* all-spaces because unix developers *can't* follow rules.

Or is "unix developers" code for "my sample size of one"?

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> > As I mentioned, an all-space policy is trivial to enforce.
> 
> Hell no, it's not.
> 
> More importantly, I can guarantee that certain developers will refuse to 
> be part of such a project with such an idiotic design that eats disk-space 
> for no gain, and makes it impossible for me to use my normal editor.

Interesting how you waver between "certain developers" and "me". I'm convinced at this point that your argument comes down to "I can't use my favorite text editor with all-spaces, therefore all-spaces sucks".

As for *disk space*? When we can measure cheap drives in sizable fractions of *terabytes*, this simply isn't a serious argument.

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> > But I still haven't seen any compelling arguments against the "all space"
> > case, other than "people will screw it up into mixed spaces", which is really
> > a straw man, as many multi-platform projects enforced the all-space policy
> > easily by using a pre-commit hook in maintainers' repository.
> 
> Hey, you start your own projct, and you can enforce whatever idiotic rules 
> you want to.

Yeah, can you believe some projects actually *survive* with an all-spaces indentation rule? And ::gasp:: even *thrive*?

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> But in the meantime, all-tab indentations are equally good, and are the 
> defacto rule. So *you* are the one who should show compelling arguments 
> for changing, and so far you haven't shown any.
> 
> Really: what is the problem with hardtabs? Absolutely none.

Problems have been outlined, but since everything for you comes down to "anything that comes between me and microemacs sucks", rational discussion breaks down.

Thank goodness the git community (not to mention the Linux community!) is larger than you; they exist in no small part due to your programming skill and initial open-sourcing, but certainly in *spite* of your personality otherwise.