[Openmcl-devel] Tab character in indented Lisp code, turn it off how?

[Andrew Shalit]

Why not just go with the preference voiced by people on this list?   
After all, we'll be the initial users, so that's better than flipping  
a coin.

I'd vote spaces.  I don't see any advantage to tabs, and I see many  
drawbacks.  So now it's 4 votes for spaces, none for tabs as the  
default.

On Nov 27, 2007, at 3:50 AM, Gary Byers wrote:

> Googling for 'tabs "coding style"'suggests that there are many  
> different
> conventions in widespread use (which would have been my guess even if
> I hadn't just Googled ...)
>
> Guessing whether "tabs" or "spaces" is the approprate default for a  
> given
> user probably doesn't have more than a 50% chance of being right.
>
> Making it easy to customize default editor behavior and to adapt to
> different conventions seems more important at this point than changing
> the default.  When that's no longer true and it's time to think about
> what the default should be, I propose that a coin be flipped.
>
> [If anyone's convinced that they have some compelling argument that's
> more persuasive than a coin flip would be, Googling for 'tabs "coding
> style" "endless flame war"' might dissuade them of that belief.  Then
> again, it might not: didn't the people involved in those discussions
> Google first ?]
>
>
> On Tue, 27 Nov 2007, Hans Hübner wrote:
>
>> All code style guides that I have come accross in commercial projects
>> during the years require that no Tabs are present in source files.  I
>> would make indenting using spaces the default.
>>
>> -Hans
>>
>> On Nov 26, 2007 7:08 PM, Gary Byers <gb at clozure.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On Mon, 26 Nov 2007, Rainer Joswig wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> I see that indenting Lisp code inserts tab characters for spaces.
>>>>
>>>> I'll guess that there is a switch to turn that off?
>>>
>>> There's a Hemlock variable that contains a function used
>>> to insert whitespace for indentation.  (Somewhat confusingly,
>>> the name of the variable suggests that tabs would be used
>>> for indentation; whether they are or not depends on the
>>> value of that variable):
>>>
>>> ? (hemlock::variable-value hemlock::indent-with-tabs)
>>> #<Compiled-function HEMLOCK::INDENT-USING-TABS #x3000416FD4EF>
>>> ? (setf (hemlock::variable-value hemlock::indent-with-tabs)  
>>> #'hemlock::indent-using-spaces)
>>> #<Compiled-function HEMLOCK::INDENT-USING-SPACES #x3000416FCF1F>
>>> ? (hemlock::variable-value hemlock::spaces-per-tab)
>>> 8
>>>
>>> Hemlock variables can be buffer-local (the examples above just
>>> accessd the global values.)  Whatever one may think of the way
>>> that they're implemented in Hemlock, the concept of buffer-local
>>> variables (or something very much like them) is certainly useful.
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Personally I would prefer to not have tab characters
>>>> in a Lisp file. What do you think?
>>>
>>> It's been about 10 years since I cared either way (long enough that
>>> I've forgotten why I ever did.)
>>>
>>> I think that most of the reasons for this blissful indifference had
>>> to do with using an editor that provided a rich set of features
>>> ("entab", "detab", "set tab width", "use/don't-use tabs", ...)
>>> for dealing with this.  (Even if I rarely had occasion to deal
>>> with any of it.)
>>>
>>> I don't have any strong opinion about whether the default behavior
>>> should involve using tabs or not; I do believe that it should be
>>> easy to change the default behavior and to override the default
>>> as needed.
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Tab characters are inserted at least by
>>>>
>>>> * Hemlock command: Indent Region
>>>> * Pressing Tab in a Hemlock window
>>>>
>>>> Regards,
>>>>
>>>> Rainer Joswig
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Openmcl-devel mailing list
>>>> Openmcl-devel at clozure.com
>>>> http://clozure.com/mailman/listinfo/openmcl-devel
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Openmcl-devel mailing list
>>> Openmcl-devel at clozure.com
>>> http://clozure.com/mailman/listinfo/openmcl-devel
>>>
>>
> _______________________________________________
> Openmcl-devel mailing list
> Openmcl-devel at clozure.com
> http://clozure.com/mailman/listinfo/openmcl-devel