Re: Are TABs a topic? ( was Re: “A dispute over the TAB key highlights a mismatch [...])

From	Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid>
Newsgroups	comp.editors, comp.lang.c
Subject	Re: Are TABs a topic? ( was Re: “A dispute over the TAB key highlights a mismatch [...])
Date	2026-06-04 00:07 +0000
Organization	A noiseless patient Spider
Message-ID	<10vqfkb$259o$4@dont-email.me> (permalink)
References	<10tg96h$1g1mp$1@dont-email.me> <10tismt$2cmtr$1@dont-email.me> <10vnae7$35ho0$1@dont-email.me> <10vooj9$3uus7$9@dont-email.me> <10vorkv$3h8en$1@dont-email.me>

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On Wed, 3 Jun 2026 05:20:31 -0400, Paul wrote:

> Tabs or tabulation control, was from the typewriter era.

That concept did also carry over to the computer terminal era.

Press that big fat “SET-UP” button on a VT100 terminal, for example,
and the most prominent feature you see is the tab ruler along the
bottom, with a “T” marking each tab stop.

> Where does that leave us in a modern era ? Concept is perverted, by
> emitting some fixed number of spaces per tab, which is not how the
> original concept worked.

Not quite. It is usual for software to emulate tabs the way they were
supposed to work, by skipping to the next tab stop position, not by
emitting some fixed number of spaces.

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Are TABs a topic? ( was Re: “A dispute over the TAB key highlights a mismatch [...]) Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> - 2026-06-03 10:28 +0200
  Re: Are TABs a topic? ( was Re: “A dispute over the TAB key highlights a mismatch [...]) Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> - 2026-06-03 05:20 -0400
    Re: Are TABs a topic? ( was Re: “A dispute over the TAB key highlights a mismatch [...]) Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> - 2026-06-03 14:50 +0200
    Re: Are TABs a topic? ( was Re: “A dispute over the TAB key highlights a mismatch [...]) Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-06-04 00:07 +0000

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