untabify?

[Bruno Haible]

Hi,

I see that some of you are starting to untabify C source code (Jim in
lib/userspec.c, Eric in lib/pipe-safer.c). Is this a signal that we can
finally put those annoying TAB characters at rest? [1] I would love it.

Just 2 questions:

  - Since GNU Emacs defaults have certainly not changed: What is the
    piece of code that we can recommend users to put into their Emacs
    configuration? Does everyone agree with

      ;; Don't use tabs by for indentation. Spacer are nicer to work with.
      (setq-default indent-tabs-mode nil)

    of for vim

      " Don't use tabs by for indentation. Spacer are nicer to work with.
      set expandtab

    Can I put this in the gnulib README?

  - How do we deal with untabifying of existing code? In commits like
    
http://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=gnulib.git;a=commitdiff;h=6ed67a15a265e213d2cbaac25ccc995fddf73ac6
    (both in gitk and on the web) I have to read the code change
    line by line to understand there was only whitespace change. I'd like
    to propose to untabify in separate commits, i.e. not mix untabify
    and real changes in one commit.

Bruno

[1] http://www.jwz.org/doc/tabs-vs-spaces.html