Fri, 6 Dec 2002 12:09:46 +0100, Ingo Wechsung
No. My editor produces the ASCII code for horizontal tab, when I hit the tab key. Just as it produces the ASCII code for a when I hit the a key.
That's how it should be.
It shouln't, becase tabs are 8 spaces, which is too much for indentation of programs in most languages.
The real problem is, that nobody could tell from just looking at the screen, what a program means even if you know the layout rules very well.
Of course I can. If you can't, perhaps you are using a non-standard tab width? Please fix settings of your editor and it will work.
Instead, your text editor displays some space in place of the tab. Only if the expansion rules of your editor are compatible with Haskell's may you grasp the source codes meaning.
But they are compatible because there is one most universally accepted interpretation of a tab (move to the next multiple of 8 columns). Any other interpretation hampers portability and should be avoided.
Think of a software development team. One member (in India) uses "convert n leading spaces to tabs", the other (in Japan) "convert leading tabs to m spaces". Everytime one of them makes a small change in a file that has been changed by the other before, the source code control system will have a huge diff.
All these problems are caused by people who use a different tab size than 8. With consistent tab size there is no reason to convert between tabs and spaces. -- __("< Marcin Kowalczyk \__/ qrczak@knm.org.pl ^^ http://qrnik.knm.org.pl/~qrczak/