Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ukma!uflorida!novavax!twwells!bill
From: bill@twwells.uucp (T. William Wells)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Standard Indentation etc.
Message-ID: <273@twwells.uucp>
Date: 24 Dec 88 01:18:22 GMT
References: <663@htsa.uucp> <832@husc6.harvard.edu> <2450@ficc.uu.net> <889@quintus.UUCP> <129@mole-end.UUCP>
Reply-To: bill@twwells.UUCP (T. William Wells)
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In article <129@mole-end.UUCP> mat@mole-end.UUCP (Mark A Terribile) writes:
: Of course, if you are using a screen whose typeface is so poor that you have
: to lean 5'' close to it to read your program, then the 2-space indent is
: easily explained ;^}

Actually, I read the screen from about seven inches. I use eight
space tabs. I'm not wedded to eight, though until the standard method
of handling tabs changes I'll stick with it. And very small
indentations cause two problems:

    1) It is harder to verify that things line up: the close spacing
       makes it difficult to distinguish one vertical column from
       another.

    2) If you, as I do, write continuation lines as partially
       indented, checking out indentation is even harder.

I'd guess that the smallest indentation that avoids the above problems
is four spaces.

---
Bill
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