[pacman-dev] script spaces/tabs, modelines, etc.

[Dan McGee]

>
> Ehm... I'm not a vim user, so I don't know exactly what ts=2 sw=2 noet
> means, but...
This means that tabstops (ts) are set to equal the width of 2 spaces,
and shiftwidth (sw) is also set to 2 spaces. It is a bit harder to
explain the difference between these two things, but for most purposes
you set them to the same value. The 'no expand tab' (noet) setting
keeps tabs as tabs and does not convert them to spaces.

> personally I never use tabs because of thouse indenting issues, so I
> want to ask [silly] question:
> why to use tabs at all? why not to indent with space chars only?
Here is my take, and this is where you have ridiculous no-win debates
on the subject. Tabs should be used for structuring your syntax, such
as in loops and conditional statements. If you use spaces only, you
are making everyone that reads your code abide by your particular
preference (2 spaces, 4, 8, etc). With tabs anyone is free to change
the default (which is also an assumption made by spaces that a tab is
always x characters).

To sum up my position, and at least what seems to be the position of
the current pacman codebase with already existing modelines: tabs are
used for indenting, spaces are used for spacing.

-Dan