Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!ukma!uflorida!novavax!hcx1!bill From: bill@ssd.harris.com (Bill Leonard) Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran Subject: Re: dpANS Fortran 8x Message-ID: Date: 12 Jun 89 16:52:06 GMT References: <2721@elxsi.UUCP> Sender: news@hcx1.UUCP Distribution: usa Organization: Harris Computer Systems Division Lines: 33 In-reply-to: corbett@beatnix.UUCP's message of 8 Jun 89 00:16:02 GMT > I cannot understand why X3J3 refuses to add horizontal tabs to the > Fortran character set. To my knowledge, there are no longer any machines > being produced that do not include a horizontal tab in their character > set. Differences between tabbing conventions are a major obstacle to > portability. Users do not like being told that they should not have put > tabs in their codes if they wanted them to be portable. Well, one reason is that we can't get a majority to agree on what a tab would mean. Those who want tabs usually want it to mean "however many spaces it produces on my terminal when I display the file" -- try getting that into a standard! The problem really lies in the fact that, while tab is a "standard" character, it has an implementation-defined meaning. In fact, on some systems the user can change the tab settings, thus changing the "meaning" of tab dynamically! If all X3J3 did were to allow tabs in source files, but didn't specify it's meaning, portability would not improve one iota. I, personally, have never understood why any designer of a text editor or other source-processing system should ever put a tab character in a source file. The tab key, originally, was simply a time-saver for typists to avoid having to hit the space bar many times. I think it should remain just that, and the text-processing system should translate it to the proper number of space characters. One of the many reasons I hate the 'vi' editor is its insistence on inserting tabs, even when I didn't hit the tab key!!!! "Doctor, it hurts when I do this!" "Then don't do that." -- Bill Leonard Harris Computer Systems Division 2101 W. Cypress Creek Road Fort Lauderdale, FL 33309 bill@ssd.harris.com or hcx1!bill@uunet.uu.net