Package: mc Version: 3:4.7.0.9-2 Severity: normal Hi,
mcedit have this interesting "fake half tab" mode, in which single tab key press, generates 4 spaces, and second single tab key press generates 4 more space, which are automagically converted to real tab which is displayed as 8 character width. I found that this mode makes after a while real mess in a code base. This is because after a while, especially when coping and reindenting pieces of code from other files or editors, you start having mix of space and tabs used for indentation, which is extreamally bad for maintaince and readibility reasons. I personally always change it to not use "fake half tabs", and display tabs as 4 character width (however leaving current 8 characters is also fully acceptable by me, and somtimes preferable). I would like to have this become standard and default setting for mcedit. One can argue about to eventually not use tabs (with 2, 4 or 8 or whetever width), but use spaces (when using "Fill tabs with spaces" mcedit option), but this bug report is about consistency. And because mcedit already uses hard tabs, I just think that logical conslusion is to disable "fake half tabs" in default/initial settings. Fake half tabs mode have other undesired properties, like fact that pressing tab two times, gives you single hard tab, and then you can remove it using single backspace press, makeing it highly assymetric and unreversible. Whichever you choice, please be consistant and do not mix spaces and real hard tabs for indentation. This implies disabling "fake half tabs" option by default, as I indicated. Simple single change. I want to raise awerness of this problem, because I find more and more people use mcedit with its default settings, especially computer science students, and it drives me mad when I see mixed indentation and messed source code due stupid mcedit defaults. It is not that I cannot change the setting in my own mcedit. But this is because I understand the problem, however many beginers doesn, and often doesn't care, makeing mess. If they doesn't understand or care, please make default settings a sane ones. (just disable "fake half tabs" option, which of course can be reenabled by whoever wants) Thanks, Witek -- System Information: Debian Release: wheezy/sid APT prefers unstable APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental') Architecture: i386 (i686) Kernel: Linux 3.2.0-1-686-pae (SMP w/1 CPU core) Locale: LANG=pl_PL.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=pl_PL.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash Versions of packages mc depends on: ii e2fslibs 1.42-1 ii libc6 2.13-24 ii libcomerr2 1.42-1 ii libglib2.0-0 2.30.2-6 ii libgpm2 1.20.4-4 ii libslang2 2.2.4-5 Versions of packages mc recommends: ii mime-support 3.51-1 Versions of packages mc suggests: ii arj 3.10.22-10 ii bzip2 1.0.6-1 ii catdvi <none> ii dbview <none> ii djvulibre-bin 3.5.24-9 ii evince [pdf-viewer] 3.2.1-1 ii file 5.09-2 ii gv [pdf-viewer] 1:3.7.3-1 ii imagemagick 8:6.6.9.7-5+b2 ii links 2.5-1 ii lynx 2.8.8dev.9-3 ii odt2txt 0.4+git20100620-1 ii perl 5.14.2-7 ii python 2.7.2-10 ii python-boto <none> ii python-tz 2011h-1 ii unzip 6.0-5 ii w3m 0.5.3-5 ii xpdf [pdf-viewer] 3.03-7 ii xpdf-reader 3.02-12 ii zip 3.0-4 -- no debconf information -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
