Re: [9fans] handling tabs in text frames

[Uriel <uriel99@gmail.com>]

When I first read rob calling coding in variable-width fonts
'liberating' I was skeptical, but with time (and acme) I have come to
understand his point of view;  when you are forced to stop worrying
about character width, writing code becomes much more like writing
prose and you actually have one less thing to worry about. Sadly I'm
still sometimes distracted trying to get everything to align 'right',
but that is more my fault for not being able to give up control over
tedious details.

I like nemo's idea for tabs, but I agree with erik that it will be
hard to make it work in practice given how much text out there will
probably become messed up, you could add yet another toggle to
enable/disable this, but that would create yet another thing one has
to worry about fiddling with, having to worry about eight or four
space tabs is already painful enough.

Best wishes

uriel

P.S.: I wonder how 'liberating' rob finds the 'two spaces indentation'
policy at google ;)

On 8/27/07, erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net> wrote:
> > i agree tab handling is imperfect and often frustrating (especially
> > when working with people who code in variable-width fonts, which,
> > personally, still seems a bit odd to me) [...]
>
> why?  no one reads books in fixed-pitch type.
> just because teletypes did it, isn't a compelling
> reason to continue the tradition on bit-mapped
> displays.
>
> part of the reason that 8-space-width tabs
> (or whatever) seem wide with a fixed-pitch font
> is that fixed-pitch fonts have to squeeze `W' into
> the same space as `i.'
>
> - erik
>