Emacs auto-modes and tabs

[Erik Price]

On Wednesday, April 16, 2003, at 04:33  PM, pll at lanminds.com wrote:

> Well, there are many, many diatribes against using tabs.  Why, I
> don't know, but there are :)  I think some of it might have to do
> with broken mail readers and proportionally spaced fonts, or
> something, but really, I have no idea.

My understanding is that it is often a project guideline or  
requirement.  The Python style guide  
(<http://python.org/doc/essays/styleguide.html>) strongly recommends  
spaces over tabs (and tabs should be 4-spaces wide), and in this  
language it really is important to at least standardize on one or the  
other (and not both) since indentation level is so significant to the  
syntax.  And both Sun's Java code conventions  
(<http://java.sun.com/docs/codeconv/html/ 
CodeConventions.doc3.html#262>) and the respected "Elements of Java  
Style" book recommend using four spaces for each tab too.

There seem to be quite a few open source projects that request it for  
submissions/patches, as well.  (Though I imagine there are quite a few  
that prefer real tabs, I just haven't seen them.)


Erik