[Gambas-user] Draw.Text problem with control chars

[Kadaitcha Man]

On 1 February 2010 20:37, Doriano Blengino
<doriano.blengino at ...1909...> wrote:
> Kadaitcha Man ha scritto:
>> On 31 January 2010 22:14, Doriano Blengino
>> <doriano.blengino at ...1909...> wrote:
>>
>>> Kad Mann ha scritto:
>>>
>>>> Doriano Blengino wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> A tab width is normally eight spaces
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> Every single one of my cites say you're completely wrong.
>>>>
>>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tab_key
>>>> www.jwz.org/doc/tabs-vs-spaces.html
>>>> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/268538/tab-versus-space-indentation-in-c
>>>> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/119562/tabs-versus-spaces-in-python-programming
>>>> http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_spaces_is_a_tab
>>>> http://wiki.answers.com/Q/When_and_how_do_you_indent_to_begin_a_paragraph
>>>> http://srfi.schemers.org/srfi-49/mail-archive/msg00000.html
>>>>
>>> Open a console, type "cat" followed by enter. Press the tab key and look
>>> where the cursor goes.
>>>
>>
>> lol - they are tab columns, not tabs.
>>
> I really don't understand you. I went to read your "cites". From
> wikipedia (your first link):
>

Tab columns can be any width. A tab column can be 2 or 20 characters.
Seeing as a terminal is nominally 80 characters wide, each tab column
is 8 spaces apart, giving 10 tab columns.

That each tab column is 8 spaces apart in a terminal does not imply
that "A tab width is normally eight spaces." It just so happens that
that is default for a terminal, chosen by the developers, a default
that can be changed using setterm -tabs

By your own logic, if a document is 120 characters wide and has two
tab columns then you'd have to claim a tab was 60 characters wide.

There is no correspondence between a tab and the number of spaces it
naturally consumes. The number of spaces a tab should rightly consume
is entirely dependent on the visual characteristics. That is why
Gambas has a default of less than 8 spaces for a tab, otherwise the
code would look ridiculous.

So, to summarise, a tab is as many spaces wide as is needed to make
the text look correct. It is not "normally eight spaces".

> BTW, I wrote to you privately some days ago - did you receive my email?

Yes, thank you.

> BTW2: where do you live, if you care? Just my curiosity...

I'm an Aussie living in Indonesia.

> it helps me to imagine a real person behind these emails.

I'm not real.