Re: tabs v spaces in Emacs's source files

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: Karl Fogel <kfogel@red-bean.com>
> Date: Fri, 07 Mar 2008 12:11:36 -0500
> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> "Juanma Barranquero" <lekktu@gmail.com> writes:
> > But anyway, the point is that there's a lot of code using spaces. If
> > there's a real interest in using only tabs, I'd suggest start adding
> > indent-tabs-mode cookies to local variables sections.
> 
> I very much prefer spaces, because they're diff-safe (for example, in
> commit emails).

Whatever people prefer, we should IMO use a consistent indentation
rules in Emacs.  Personally, I prefer the Emacs defaults, but if the
head maintainers prefer a different scheme, I will not object.

In any case, the current situation of inconsistent use of spaces and
TABs is IMO much worse than any of the consistent alternatives.
AFAIU, the GNU Coding Standards call for consistency wrt issues of
style:

       The rest of this section gives our recommendations for other aspects
    of C formatting style, which is also the default style of the `indent'
    program in version 1.2 and newer.  It corresponds to the options

	 -nbad -bap -nbc -bbo -bl -bli2 -bls -ncdb -nce -cp1 -cs -di2
	 -ndj -nfc1 -nfca -hnl -i2 -ip5 -lp -pcs -psl -nsc -nsob

       We don't think of these recommendations as requirements, because it
    causes no problems for users if two different programs have different
    formatting styles.

       But whatever style you use, please use it consistently, since a
    mixture of styles within one program tends to look ugly.  If you are
    contributing changes to an existing program, please follow the style of
    that program.