Not really, surprisingly. The “tab” terminology is a hangover from the typewriter days, when pressing the tab key would move your carriage to the left (i.e. sending the typing position towards the right) to the point where the tab stop was, which may or may not have been user configurable depending on the age or fanciness level of your typewriter. On mechanical models this involved sliding a little arrowhead shaped mechanical dingus up at the top over the carriage, a skeuomorph that’s still present in basically every computer word processing application even today.
This was to allow operators to easily write tabular data, i.e. tables or columns, which would be inset from the left margin by a consistent amount, and typically much further inboard than the indent at the beginning of a paragraph would be. The latter was usually accomplished with a small number of spaces instead. And this is why the key is called “tab” and not “ind” or something.
This got carried over to word processors and then to computers kind of by default. But interestingly (if you’re the right kind of nerd to be interested by that sort of thing, anyway) early 8 bit microcomputers that were not envisaged with word processing or a typewriter-esque paradigm in mind conspicuously lacked a tab key. The Commodore 64 and Vic 20, TI-99, Acorn Electron, and certainly the ZX Spectrum all leap to mind.
But the original IBM PC definitely had a tab key, which was almost certainly carried directly over from IBM’s Selectric typewriters. So we’ve had it ever since. The notion of there being a “tab character” of some greater-than-space width lent it to being used for first line indents for a while, but the prominence of HTML and its dogged insistence on collapsing whitespace – especially at the beginning of lines – eventually put a stop to that and caused practically everybody to switch to double line breaks to separate paragraphs instead. Except for writing code, which can involve a whole bunch of indentation to many, many levels of depth.
Indenting the starts of paragraphs was an even older hangover from printing presses, and that’s another whole damn rabbit hole anyway.
I read an article / listened to a podcast where a visually impaired person said that tabs are much better because they can configure how wide they are rendered to better accommodate them and now In would prefer to use tabs. Still all customers i have seem to use only spaces.
I mean, how could using tabs not be consistent when only comparing to spaces? Seems to me like spaces give infinitely more opportunity to fuck up indentation.
Tabs over spaces, always
… wait, you’re asking in asklemmy, not programming…
Uhhh… that thing where people glue little strands of hair to their forehead in an arc
Tabs were literally designed for indenting, as far as I can tell.
Not really, surprisingly. The “tab” terminology is a hangover from the typewriter days, when pressing the tab key would move your carriage to the left (i.e. sending the typing position towards the right) to the point where the tab stop was, which may or may not have been user configurable depending on the age or fanciness level of your typewriter. On mechanical models this involved sliding a little arrowhead shaped mechanical dingus up at the top over the carriage, a skeuomorph that’s still present in basically every computer word processing application even today.
This was to allow operators to easily write tabular data, i.e. tables or columns, which would be inset from the left margin by a consistent amount, and typically much further inboard than the indent at the beginning of a paragraph would be. The latter was usually accomplished with a small number of spaces instead. And this is why the key is called “tab” and not “ind” or something.
This got carried over to word processors and then to computers kind of by default. But interestingly (if you’re the right kind of nerd to be interested by that sort of thing, anyway) early 8 bit microcomputers that were not envisaged with word processing or a typewriter-esque paradigm in mind conspicuously lacked a tab key. The Commodore 64 and Vic 20, TI-99, Acorn Electron, and certainly the ZX Spectrum all leap to mind.
But the original IBM PC definitely had a tab key, which was almost certainly carried directly over from IBM’s Selectric typewriters. So we’ve had it ever since. The notion of there being a “tab character” of some greater-than-space width lent it to being used for first line indents for a while, but the prominence of HTML and its dogged insistence on collapsing whitespace – especially at the beginning of lines – eventually put a stop to that and caused practically everybody to switch to double line breaks to separate paragraphs instead. Except for writing code, which can involve a whole bunch of indentation to many, many levels of depth.
Indenting the starts of paragraphs was an even older hangover from printing presses, and that’s another whole damn rabbit hole anyway.
I read an article / listened to a podcast where a visually impaired person said that tabs are much better because they can configure how wide they are rendered to better accommodate them and now In would prefer to use tabs. Still all customers i have seem to use only spaces.
Do you mean styling baby hairs?
Yes! Thats it!
She got six eyebrows and a widows peak!
Thanks i hate it
I also hate those.
I am more into spaces, but as long as the indentation is done consistently i can tolerate tabs.
I mean, how could using tabs not be consistent when only comparing to spaces? Seems to me like spaces give infinitely more opportunity to fuck up indentation.