William "Chops" Westfield wrote:

> On Sep 13, 2009, at 8:39 AM, Gerhard Fiedler wrote:
> 
>> So the only way to share code between different editors without
>> messing with the configuration of the editor is to not use tabs.
> 
> I'm a big proponent of tabs (it hurts my sense of frugality to use 8
> spaces where one tab would do (yes, even in this day and age when
> text file size is largely irrelevant.)) 
> 
> But Olin is right; there's no universally accepted standard, and the
> only way to share formatted code across wide populations is to make
> sure that any tabs are replaced with the appropriate number of
> spaces. 
> 
> What REALLY bugs me is that in this day and age, with all the extra
> "markup language" that lets me tell you that this part of the email
> is 7bit ascii, Helvetica 11 point font, etc, etc, is ... WHY ISN'T
> THERE A MARKUP VARIABLE THAT LETS ME TELL YOU WHERE MY TABSTOPS ARE!?

It's simple: In HTML with CSS (currently probably the most common
formatting markup), you just don't use tabs; they're not part of the
language (AFAIK) -- you'd use other means to achieve the effect. In
plain text email, you don't use any markup -- that's the whole
(remaining) point of plain text email.

Gerhard
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