AW: AW: AW: Editor Tab Expansion

Ingo Wechsung iw@contexo.de
Fri, 6 Dec 2002 19:17:53 +0100


Kevin,

thanks for your helpfull comments.

    Ingo> Or, to turn it another way: "What you see is not necessarily
    Ingo> what you get".  This may be fine for ad hoc scripts that one
    Ingo> examines in hugs.

>So is that the language's fault (because of what you get) or the
>editor's fault (because of what you see)?

It depends on the abstraction level.
Sure, I don't see Tabs and Spaces on the character level. I was not supposed
to, up to now.
On a higher level I see whitespace. Whitespace didn't matter, except for
making things look nicer, up to now.

I don't say the language is wrong. Beware. I only have my doubts about the
question if its a good idea to cast a whitespace aware thing into an
environment, namely *nix, where whitespace didn't matter. Up to now.

Now that I know I can use semicolons and braces safely with any spacing, I
can live with it. It's fine for me. I could write a
haskell-insert-braces-and-semicolons-where-needed program if I feel like it.
I think I will not feel like so, except for amusement. But then, I've got to
get checks from my customers by the end of the month. So, perhaps I'll
rather try to get my work done.

But the problem will hurt others, again and again.

Good night
Ingo