Re: indent-tabs-mode

[Miles Bader <miles.bader@necel.com>]

Nick Roberts <nickrob@snap.net.nz> writes:
> Every application has to decide how it's going to display a tab.  Emacs
> uses eight spaces by default but others use a different number.

8 is not an arbitrary value, it's pretty much the standard.

> I've noticed it in diffs where the source has tabs and appears different
> e.g in the mail archives.

This is due to users who use a different setting when they edit a file;
in order to get rid of _that_ problem, you're going to have to convince
everybody to change their setting, and morever, _modify_ every existing
source file.  That's a nightmare for merging/maintenance, and isn't
going to (shouldn't) happen.

>  > Those commands do not do anything special, they simply do what
>  > indent-tabs-mode tells them to do; if indent-tabs-mode is t, they will
>  > insert tabs.
>
> Since they all seem to insert spaces, I think this either says that nil would
> be a sensible default for indent-tabs-mode, or it doesn't really matter.

They do not insert spaces by default.  If they are for you, that means
you've changed some setting.

-Miles
-- 
"Suppose He doesn't give a shit?  Suppose there is a God but He
just doesn't give a shit?"  [George Carlin]