bug#20322: 25.0.50; indent-tabs-mode should default to nil

[John Wiegley <jwiegley@gmail.com>]

>>>>> Dmitry Gutov <dgutov@yandex.ru> writes:

> What's so confusing about it? They'll see the new behavior (or read NEWS),
> look it up, and customize one variable, if they really want to. Unlike new
> users, they might know the variable already, and they certainly know how to
> customize.

I don't believe this is a realistic assessment of what will happen. I just
don't.

> We don't actually know how many people it's going to be a problem for, do
> we? For all we know, most of the existing users already use spaces (the
> third-party community has standardized on them). And some fraction will be
> indifferent to the change.

We don't know too many things, that's the point. You're suggesting an
improvement based on what you think will be an improvement, while causing
difficulties that you don't think will be worse overall.

But why change? What is the driving factor behind this request? Do we know
we're actively losing users because we insert tabs when one presses the TAB
key -- to such an extent that changing this default will keep those users? Is
the change important enough that it's OK to annoy the people (our existing
users) who will be surprised by this change?

Otherwise, it sounds like a theoretical improvement to me, which is not enough
to convince me in matters like this.

> If it were up to me, we'd try changing the default during the development
> cycle of Emacs 26, and see how many complaints we get.

You're welcome to poll, but I don't think you'd reach everyone that needs
reaching. It would, however, at least be a data point.

-- 
John Wiegley                  GPG fingerprint = 4710 CF98 AF9B 327B B80F
http://newartisans.com                          60E1 46C4 BD1A 7AC1 4BA2