[MPlayer-dev-eng] [bikeshed] Coding style

[Bryan Henderson]

On 6/18/08, Michael Niedermayer <michaelni at gmx.at> wrote:
> Having to reconfigure ones editor between tabs and spaces indention is
> annoyng for example or switching tab width, so i hope we can agree on
> either tabs or spaces and the indention width at least ...

The cost of tabs is significantly higher than that, though what you
say is reason enough to wipe tabs off the face of the Earth.  Often
people look at code in something other than a code editor (e.g. email
reader) and can't control tab placement.  And sometimes, you want to
drop a piece of code into another document, which could conceivably
use tab stops for something else.  If you even drop code into a file
that uses the same tab stops, but you don't drop it at Column 0, the
spacing gets all screwed up.

Spaces are infallible.  They always look the way the author intended,
everywhere.

People started using tabs when the compression they offered compared
to spaces was significant, in disk space and terminal
transmission/display times.  I don't know of any reason to prefer them
over spaces now except "that's how my editor is set up today."