henry (04/14/83)
"Turning tabs into spaces is a feature, not a bug.... Do you really
like it when you're inserting text into tab-infested whitespace
and you can't type where you want because there's no "there" there ?
...or when trailing characters jump spasmodically when you type
the character that pushes it to the brink of the next tabstop ?"
Turning tabs into spaces remains a bug -- it involves loss of information,
something text editors are not supposed to do unless asked. A tab is
equivalent to a specific number of spaces only if the text in the vicinity
is never ever changed.
As to how an editor should DISPLAY tabs, BBN's "Pen" editor has the right
approach to this. A tab is displayed as the right amount of white space,
and you can type over it as if it was blanks, but the editor REMEMBERS that
it is really a tab, and keeps it that way unless you type over the last
blank. This gives you the wins of tabs with minimal oddities in editing.
Henry Spencer
U of Toronto