XOM API for Processing XML with Java

["John.Cowan" <jcowan AT reutershealth.com>]

Michael Kay scripsit:

> Elliotte is right, as usual. The effect of a tab is context dependent, which
> makes it very unmanageable. 

Indeed it is context-dependent, which can be either good or bad, depending
on the wider context.  If you want everyone to see the same indentation,
spaces are better; if you want people to be able to choose the indentation,
tabs are better.

(It's quite true that using tabs as field delimiters in data files is a
Bad Thing, because it's easy to get confused about how many tab characters
are present when editing such files with a general text editor.)

> It was a really bad idea to allow tabs to be stored in files at all -
> a tab was originally a key on a keyboard that caused a number of spaces
> to appear in the document, and it should have stayed that way.

You are speaking of typewriters?

In any case, the issue is moot; the standard "unexpand" utility will
convert runs of spaces to tabs, and allows you to set a particular
tab width, or even an arbitrary set of tab stops (as on a typewriter).
The converse utility "expand" converts tabs to runs of spaces.

-- 
Verbogeny is one of the pleasurettes    John Cowan <jcowan AT reutershealth.com>
of a creatific thinkerizer.             http://www.reutershealth.com
   -- Peter da Silva                    http://www.ccil.org/~cowan