Re: indent-tabs-mode default [was: Representation of the Emacs userbase on emacs-devel]

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 06.09.2021 06:06, Richard Stallman wrote:
>    > And having a theme to just make indent-tabs-mode behavior sane, that
>    > would just be ridiculous.
>
> I've been using indent-tabs-mode = nil for enough time to conclude
> I personally would not object to making that the default.
>
> Would someone like to look up who objected to it before, and
> ask them to try setting it to nil for a month and see what cases
> actually cause them trouble?

I'm afraid it's not a good question.

If you look at bug#20322 or the latest discussion, people usually talk 
about inconveniencing *others* (all users that are not present in the 
discussion). Because every one who objected can personally easily 
customize indent-tabs-mode to t locally, and that will endure for a long 
time, without being affected by any changes in the default value in any 
future Emacs version.

But as far as customizing it to nil goes, that's not generally a good 
suggestion because people who use tabs for indentation often do that due 
to coding style required at their current place of employment (and they 
often do not get a say in that).