Xiaofan Chen wrote:
> Anyway, there are a lot of arguments with TAB and Space

I can't think of any other than laziness.  Despite what some Unix hackers
think, there is no universal way to interpret tabs.  Some Unix stuff seems
to assume a tab stop every 8(?) columns, but there is *much* software out
there that doesn't assume that, and it shouldn't.  Since tab interpretation
varies between systems and app software, it logically follows that a source
file with tabs in it will look different on different systems.  Most of
those different interpretations will look like a mess.  This is all just
basic logic and common sense.

Any reasonable modern editor can interpret a file with tabs given a set of
user-settable tab stops and convert the file to contain only spaces.  Even
better is for the editor to give you the convenience of the tab key, but
insert spaces instead.  And if you are clinging to a stone age editor that
can't for some reason, there are plenty of free programs out there that can.
My COPYA program is one of these.  You can define a set of arbitrary tab
stops on the command line and it will translate tabs to hard spaces in the
output file.

There is really no excuse anymore.  Leaving tabs in a file you ask 2000
people to review as a favor is just plain lazy and therefore rude.  It's the
same sort of inexcusable sloppiness as leaving off units.


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