[NCLUG] Looking at programming languages...

[Chad Perrin]

On Thu, Jan 17, 2008 at 11:54:40AM -0700, David Braley wrote:
> 
> >
> ><rant>
> >TABS ARE 8 SPACES.
> >
> >REPEAT AFTER ME:
> >
> >TABS ARE 8 SPACES.
> ></rant>
> >  
> 
> I personally prefer tabs to be 5 1/2 spaces. I once used 6 1/4, but that 
> looked funny.

I think the confusion has something to do with the fact that people think
paragraph indentation is supposed to be a TAB character.  It's not.  It's
just a sentence comprised of a single word that starts with an f, ends
with a d, and has nor in the middle.  When you put these letters
together, of course, it produces a word that most human beings' minds
will not allow them to recognize as present, having been trained since
birth to fail to recognize this word.  It's all part of the Illuminati
conspiracy.

Of course, another component of the confusion has to do with spaces
between sentences.  There are technically one point five spaces between
sentences when they are spaced properly.  In the age of typewriters,
however, that was replaced by the common two-space practice, and that's
still the easy way to do it with computers (generally speaking).  What
this ends up looking like to the common person reading properly indented
paragraphs is eight spaces before the first visible word -- five for the
word in the actual first sentence, one for the ending punctuation mark of
the sentence, and two to separate that sentence from the first visible
sentence.

  5 + 1 + 2 = 8

I hope this brief overview of the truth of proper indentation of
paragraphs has enlightened you.

-- 
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
Baltasar Gracian: "A wise man gets more from his enemies than a fool from
his friends."