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RE: Use no tabs in Info


From: Drew Adams
Subject: RE: Use no tabs in Info
Date: Tue, 31 May 2005 11:13:53 -0700

        The TABs are not useful (not needed), they are not used
        systematically (a
        mix is used within single menu items), and their presence
        can complicate the
        processing of Info buffers by other programs and Lisp functions.

    Handling files with tabs is not very hard.  Could you please show
    an example of the problems you are talking about?  Then we could
    see if they are serious enough to warrant such a change.

I don't have a problem serious enough to warrent the change. I just don't
see why Info should have TABs. I don't suggest this as an urgent or
important problem, but as something that might be changed over time. If
there is no reason for Info to use TABS, then why use them?

FYI - My only immediate problem is with fitting a frame to a buffer. I use
the frame's default font as a guide, calculating the frame width based on
the length (# chars) of the longest line in the buffer. I don't take other
fonts (of different size) into account, and I don't take into account
characters of the same font that have a different width, such as TABs.
Still, the frame-fitting works well. The only problem I have noticed is with
a couple (very few) of the Info menus, because of a combination of embedded
TAB characters and long menu-item descriptions.

A fixed-width font is easy to deal with for code like mine (simple
formatting and analysis - no need to examine individual characters).
However, the TAB character in a fixed-width font does not respect the
general fixed-width rule.

Again, this is a minor problem that may not affect others. I just thought it
would make more sense for Info not to use TABs, since they are not needed
(Occam's razor). That's all.








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