Re: Indenting with spaces and tabs in Emacs Lisp

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hello, Nico.

On Thu, Feb 28, 2019 at 09:38:07 +0100, Nicolas Petton wrote:
> Hi,

> I've seen that in simple.el indentation is inconsistent, sometimes using
> spaces only and sometimes tabs and spaces.  Some files seem to have more
> consistent indenting using tabs and spaces, though some other files use
> only spaces.

> I thought that the convention was to use the tabs + spaces style, was I
> wrong?  I'm pretty sure this is documented somewhere, but I couldn't
> find it.

I think the general understanding is that there is no consistent pattern
of spaces vs. tabs+spaces in effect, and that this is not an important
thing.

Way back in history, tabs+spaces was, I believe, universal, since it
saved on characters when the amount of RAM and disk space were a minute
fraction of today's.

I would ask, however, that a systematic attempt to convert to a
consistent spaces only is NOT made.  This fouls up diffs, giving the
impression of change where there is none.

> Cheers,
> Nico

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).