[rfc-i] tabs [was: sourcecode indentation]

[jhildebr at cisco.com (Joe Hildebrand (jhildebr))]

On 2/15/16, 10:17 PM, "Martin J. D?rst" <duerst at it.aoyama.ac.jp> wrote:



>Of course the situation we look at is not the same as an open-source
>project, but I'm starting to get somewhat worried seeing "warning" in 
>multiple mails recently. If at all possible, we should only use warnings 
>for things that can always be avoided.
>
>So as an example, if we always process tabs by converting them to 
>spaces, and so they can always be replaced by spaces in the source, then 
>a warning looks okay. If we want to keep the tabs, and therefore there's 
>no way to get rid of the warning in some cases, then I'd look for a 
>different way to solve this.

I think the current situation is pretty close to 2119's "SHOULD NOT".  You SHOULD NOT put a tab character in <sourcecode>, unless it is absolutely required in the target language.  To deal with this, we could add a tabs="true" attribute to <sourcecode>, and give an error if there's an unintended tab character.

Alternately, we could just say that tab-encrusted Makefile's aren't supported in an RFC, and always throw an error on tabs.  Tabs can be worked around in GNU make (https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/html_node/Special-Variables.html):

.RECIPEPREFIX = >
all:
> @echo Hello, world


-- 
Joe Hildebrand