On 5/6/2026 1:43 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:
?A dispute over the TAB key highlights a mismatch between Microsoft andFwiw, I always try to setup my editors to treat the TAB key as four spaces....
IBM organizational structures? by Raymond Chen
˙˙ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20260505-00/?p=112298
?I?ve written in the past about the cultural mismatch between Microsoft
and IBM during the collaboration on OS/2, with the Microsofties viewing
their IBM colleagues as mired in pointless bureaucracy and the IBM folks
viewing Microsofties as undisciplined hackers.??
?One of many points of mismatch was the organizational structure.?
?A colleague recalls that while he was assigned to the IBM offices in
Boca Raton, Florida, there was a dispute over what key should be used to
move from one field to another in dialog boxes. The folks at IBM were
not happy with my colleague?s decision to use the TAB key, so they asked
him to escalate the issue to his manager back in Redmond.?
Ok, that resolution is funny.
I often wonder how life would have been if I had taken that job offer
with Microsoft in 1987.
["Followup-To:" header set to comp.lang.c.]
On 2026-05-07, Chris M. Thomasson <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> wrote:
On 5/6/2026 1:43 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:
?A dispute over the TAB key highlights a mismatch between Microsoft andFwiw, I always try to setup my editors to treat the TAB key as four
IBM organizational structures? by Raymond Chen
˙˙ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20260505-00/?p=112298
?I?ve written in the past about the cultural mismatch between Microsoft
and IBM during the collaboration on OS/2, with the Microsofties viewing
their IBM colleagues as mired in pointless bureaucracy and the IBM folks >>> viewing Microsofties as undisciplined hackers.??
?One of many points of mismatch was the organizational structure.?
?A colleague recalls that while he was assigned to the IBM offices in
Boca Raton, Florida, there was a dispute over what key should be used to >>> move from one field to another in dialog boxes. The folks at IBM were
not happy with my colleague?s decision to use the TAB key, so they asked >>> him to escalate the issue to his manager back in Redmond.?
Ok, that resolution is funny.
I often wonder how life would have been if I had taken that job offer
with Microsoft in 1987.
spaces....
I think TABs are cool because of this: you can set the indentation level
to what you are used to.
also saves space if you really need to squash four bytes.
Fwiw, I _always_ make my editors treat TAB as a block of spaces.
On 02/06/2026 21:27, Chris M. Thomasson wrote:
Fwiw, I _always_ make my editors treat TAB as a block of spaces.
What about Makefiles?
On 02/06/2026 21:27, Chris M. Thomasson wrote:
Fwiw, I _always_ make my editors treat TAB as a block of spaces.
What about Makefiles?
Richard Harnden <richard.nospam@gmail.invalid> writes:
On 02/06/2026 21:27, Chris M. Thomasson wrote:
Fwiw, I _always_ make my editors treat TAB as a block of spaces.
What about Makefiles?
If he actually uses make.
(I suspect he's a windows programmer primarily).
I have /* vim: xxx */ at the tail of each source file
with the appropriate tabination for the source language
or coding style guideline.
On 6/2/2026 2:35 PM, Scott Lurndal wrote:
Richard Harnden <richard.nospam@gmail.invalid> writes:
On 02/06/2026 21:27, Chris M. Thomasson wrote:
Fwiw, I _always_ make my editors treat TAB as a block of spaces.
What about Makefiles?
˙ If he actually uses make.
Not recently. Around 25 years ago? All the time. I remember back on
Solaris with my SunFire T2000, I had an issue with a makefile that
looked fine. Would not work. god damn TAB issue!
˙ (I suspect he's a windows programmer primarily).
primarily, yeah.
Solaris, and some Quadros for a job.
I have /* vim: xxx */ at the tail of each source file
with the appropriate tabination for the source language
or coding style guideline.
:^) Been a long time since I used vim. For some reason I tended toward
the MSVC, NetBeans, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anjuta, editors. ect...
Wrt tabs, for some comic relief, check this out when you have nothing to
do:
(Silicon Valley - Tabs vs Spaces War)
https://youtu.be/V7PLxL8jIl8
Well, I use the tab key all the time, but it injects n spaces. makefile aside for a moment... :^)
Richard Harnden <richard.nospam@gmail.invalid> writes:
On 02/06/2026 21:27, Chris M. Thomasson wrote:
Fwiw, I _always_ make my editors treat TAB as a block of spaces.
What about Makefiles?
If he actually uses make.
(I suspect he's a windows programmer primarily).
I have /* vim: xxx */ at the tail of each source file
with the appropriate tabination for the source language
or coding style guideline.
On 02/06/2026 21:27, Chris M. Thomasson wrote:
Fwiw, I _always_ make my editors treat TAB as a block of spaces.
What about Makefiles?
Why wouldn't you use makefiles on Windows?
[...]
I think TABs are cool because of this: you can set the indentation level
to what you are used to.
also saves space if you really need to squash four bytes.
On 2026-06-02 21:20, Mario Rosell wrote:
[...]
I think TABs are cool because of this: you can set the indentation level
to what you are used to.
Sure.
also saves space if you really need to squash four bytes.
I think this is the weakest argument for TABs; it had been weak
in former days already, and it's IMO quite ridiculous nowadays.
[...]
Tabs or tabulation control, was from the typewriter era. Setting
the stop, allowed *variable* field widths set up on your typewriter.
If you hit the tab, the carriage would move until it hit the
tab-stop you set. There was a bar along the top of the typewriter,
and the metal tab could be moved to the distance you wanted.
We used to play with this, as kids.
[...]
Where does that leave us in a modern era ? Concept is
perverted, by emitting some fixed number of spaces per tab,
which is not how the original concept worked.
Is indenting
the same amount each time, awe inspiring ? Of course. But then it
isn't really a tab any more, because it isn't banging against
a tab stop any more.
It's a "schwing over N characters" button.
And it goes downhill from there (lots of environments do not
have a visible representation that tells you a tab character
is present).
On 02/06/2026 22:53, Chris M. Thomasson wrote:
On 6/2/2026 2:35 PM, Scott Lurndal wrote:
Richard Harnden <richard.nospam@gmail.invalid> writes:
On 02/06/2026 21:27, Chris M. Thomasson wrote:
Fwiw, I _always_ make my editors treat TAB as a block of spaces.
What about Makefiles?
˙ If he actually uses make.
Not recently. Around 25 years ago? All the time. I remember back on
Solaris with my SunFire T2000, I had an issue with a makefile that
looked fine. Would not work. god damn TAB issue!
˙ (I suspect he's a windows programmer primarily).
primarily, yeah.
Why wouldn't you use makefiles on Windows?
˙Back in the day it was a lot of NT 4.0, Linux and
Solaris, and some Quadros for a job.
I have /* vim: xxx */ at the tail of each source file
with the appropriate tabination for the source language
or coding style guideline.
:^) Been a long time since I used vim. For some reason I tended toward
the MSVC, NetBeans, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anjuta, editors. ect...
Wrt tabs, for some comic relief, check this out when you have nothing
to do:
(Silicon Valley - Tabs vs Spaces War)
https://youtu.be/V7PLxL8jIl8
Well, I use the tab key all the time, but it injects n spaces.
makefile aside for a moment... :^)
You press Tab, it inserts 4 spaces, then you press Backspace; does it
delete one space or all four?
If you're navigating and press Left or Right arrow, does it skip one
space or four when at a 'tab'?
If it does the whole 'tab', how does it know when four spaces represents
a tab, or just four individual spaces?
On Fri, 8 May 2026 07:57:44 +0100, Graham J wrote:
I like mine to emulate a real typewriter - so the tab key moves to
the next tab position - usually a multiple of 8 spaces.
Real typewriters let you set the tab positions.
On 5/8/2026 4:25 AM, Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:
On Fri, 8 May 2026 07:57:44 +0100, Graham J wrote:
I like mine to emulate a real typewriter - so the tab key moves to
the next tab position - usually a multiple of 8 spaces.
Real typewriters let you set the tab positions.
What if we had a keyboard where carriage-return involved hitting a
handle above the keyboard and pushing it left, and if you pressed keys
too quickly and/or multiple keys at a time it would lead to the keyboard getting jammed and requiring the used to push the typing rods back down?...
Or, maybe like Brazil (movie) tech where this was combined with a small black-and-white CRT with a Fresnel lens magnifier?...
Or, 1984 (movie) tech where they somehow scale it to the size of a
modern flat-screen. This could maybe be done with multiple layers of
Fresnel lenses, but would likely require driving the CRT at a very high power to avoid the image being overly dark.
But, yeah, as for text-editors I prefer a tab width of 4, but I also
prefer the text editor to keep tabs behaving as tabs whether or not it
uses tabs or spaces internally. This being an area where some text
editors are annoyingly inconsistent.
I would also prefer the text editor to be strictly monospace (this is
one area where Notepad2 causes an annoyance by being not-strictly-
monospace with regards to things like syntax highlighting).
Ironically, this is also a place where SDF font rendering has an
advantage over bitmap fonts and also vector/true-type fonts: You can get bold or fine text (over a certain minimum size) simply by adjusting the threshold bias (drop the bias from 1/2 to 3/8 and suddenly the text is bold).
Contrast TTF where Normal and Bold are often handled as separate glyphs and/or different fonts.
Or, in some other contexts where it is expressed instead by changing
glyph color (normal text is light or dark gray, using full white or
black for bold text).
...
On 6/3/2026 3:00 PM, BGB wrote:
On 5/8/2026 4:25 AM, Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:
On Fri, 8 May 2026 07:57:44 +0100, Graham J wrote:
I like mine to emulate a real typewriter - so the tab key moves to
the next tab position - usually a multiple of 8 spaces.
Real typewriters let you set the tab positions.
What if we had a keyboard where carriage-return involved hitting a
handle above the keyboard and pushing it left, and if you pressed keys
too quickly and/or multiple keys at a time it would lead to the
keyboard getting jammed and requiring the used to push the typing rods
back down?...
Or, maybe like Brazil (movie) tech where this was combined with a
small black-and-white CRT with a Fresnel lens magnifier?...
Or, 1984 (movie) tech where they somehow scale it to the size of a
modern flat-screen. This could maybe be done with multiple layers of
Fresnel lenses, but would likely require driving the CRT at a very
high power to avoid the image being overly dark.
But, yeah, as for text-editors I prefer a tab width of 4, but I also
prefer the text editor to keep tabs behaving as tabs whether or not it
uses tabs or spaces internally. This being an area where some text
editors are annoyingly inconsistent.
I would also prefer the text editor to be strictly monospace (this is
one area where Notepad2 causes an annoyance by being not-strictly-
monospace with regards to things like syntax highlighting).
Depends on your font?
Ironically, this is also a place where SDF font rendering has an
advantage over bitmap fonts and also vector/true-type fonts: You can
get bold or fine text (over a certain minimum size) simply by
adjusting the threshold bias (drop the bias from 1/2 to 3/8 and
suddenly the text is bold).
Contrast TTF where Normal and Bold are often handled as separate
glyphs and/or different fonts.
Or, in some other contexts where it is expressed instead by changing
glyph color (normal text is light or dark gray, using full white or
black for bold text).
...
Tabs or tabulation control, was from the typewriter era.
Where does that leave us in a modern era ? Concept is perverted, by
emitting some fixed number of spaces per tab, which is not how the
original concept worked.
Lynn McGuire <LynnMcGuire5@GMail.com> wrote: | |--------------------------------------------------------------------|
|"For my Windows user interface with 480,000 lines of C++ code, I use| |Visual C++ 2015 to build." | |--------------------------------------------------------------------|
Hello:
Why do you use such an old version?
Do you detect any differences in different versions of link.exe from different versions of Microsoft Software Developers Kit or Visual C++?
I need to support e.g. Windows 10 but Microsoft does not still support Windows 10, so a person said to me that it might be best for me to not
use the latest Microsoft Software Developers Kit.
Thanks in advance.
(S. HTTP://Gloucester.Insomnia247.NL/ fuer Kontaktdaten!)
On 5/8/2026 4:25 AM, Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:
On Fri, 8 May 2026 07:57:44 +0100, Graham J wrote:
I like mine to emulate a real typewriter - so the tab key moves to
the next tab position - usually a multiple of 8 spaces.
Real typewriters let you set the tab positions.
What if we had a keyboard where carriage-return involved hitting a
handle above the keyboard and pushing it left ...
On Wed, 3 Jun 2026 17:00:58 -0500, BGB wrote:
On 5/8/2026 4:25 AM, Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:
On Fri, 8 May 2026 07:57:44 +0100, Graham J wrote:
I like mine to emulate a real typewriter - so the tab key moves to
the next tab position - usually a multiple of 8 spaces.
Real typewriters let you set the tab positions.
What if we had a keyboard where carriage-return involved hitting a
handle above the keyboard and pushing it left ...
Really?? You have seen or used such a machine?? I?ve never heard of
one.
On 07/06/2026 03:40, Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:
On Wed, 3 Jun 2026 17:00:58 -0500, BGB wrote:
On 5/8/2026 4:25 AM, Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:
On Fri, 8 May 2026 07:57:44 +0100, Graham J wrote:
I like mine to emulate a real typewriter - so the tab key moves to
the next tab position - usually a multiple of 8 spaces.
Real typewriters let you set the tab positions.
What if we had a keyboard where carriage-return involved hitting a
handle above the keyboard and pushing it left ...
Really?? You have seen or used such a machine?? I?ve never heard of
one.
Neither have I. Usually you push it right.
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