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Elastic Tabstops — An End to Tabs vs. Spaces?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the stretchy-logic dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Along with Vi versus Emacs, the tabs versus spaces argument must rank as one of the classic holy wars among coders. Here's an attempt to solve it by making tabstops expand or shrink to fit their contents. The concept's pretty cool to use, so be sure to have a play with the demo!"

2 of 263 comments (clear)

  1. A standard tab length would be easier by linvir · · Score: 0, Troll

    I think this is the wrong kind of solution to the problem. A standard would be easier. Just have someone say "Tabs are now officially SOME_NUMBER spaces long, so fuck you." Get Linus to approve of it or something for good measure.

    Speaking of tabs, something that I would absolutely love:
    I want to be able to indent or unindent the opening statement for a given loop, be it int, sub, function, if, for or else, and have the entire section that it describes, including the braces, indent accordingly.
    Anyone know of an editor that has this?

  2. The 1960's called and want their text editor back! by justasecond · · Score: 0, Troll

    Holy-crap! Now I remember why I hated VI in my undergrad. days (20 years ago, but it seems nothing's changed). Lemme get this straight: "%" goes to the closing brace, "=" auto-indents, "==" auto-indents the current line, "" indents right, etc? Oh, and if I put "set sw=2" in my .vimrc file I get two-space indents when I press the Tab key? Of course! How obvious.

    These days, only an overly-smug uber-nerd would use something so pointlessly obtuse.