Talk:Tab key

Proposed Move

 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the . Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

move --  tariq abjotu  (joturner) 22:58, 1 August 2006 (UTC) Rationale: It is nearly always called the tab key not the tab, and anyone searching for tab is just as likely to be looking for index card, GUI, musical or restaurant tabs.
 * Tab → Tab key
 * Tab (disambiguation) → Tab

Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley talk contrib 15:52, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Survey

 * Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, then sign your opinion with  ~


 * Support; "Tab key" removes ambiguity. David Kernow 17:29, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Support. Tab key should be added to the dab page after the move.  Vegaswikian 22:52, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Support, good call. --Dhartung | Talk 04:08, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Support, this usage is not so prevalent to deserve the "undecorated" title. Duja 12:27, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Discussion

 * Add any additional comments

Character vs. Key
Looking at this again, most of the article seems to be about the character rather than the key. Maybe it should have been moved to Tab (character)? It is probably OK where it is, as the character is derived from the key and is almost wholly used for indentation or tabulation. However, I would be grateful if anyone could comment on this before I disambiguate all the links to tab.

Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley talk contrib 02:24, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

But it isn't a character. -PatPeter 01:40, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

programable printers
IBM Key punches were card programmable. You programmed the tab stops (among other things) on a punch card, and loaded the card onto the control drum. 150.101.166.15 06:08, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Human factors
A subtle reason why many people don't like the tabs is because the tab key is on the left edge of the key board. Very few people are aware of the extent to which human factors like keyboard layout precondition their responses. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 150.101.166.15 (talk) 06:14, 21 March 2007 (UTC).

Bias: Tabs in programming
"This of course is wrong; good programming practice means ..."

Clearly this is an opinion, it needs removing or a citation, though there are no rules written in stone regarding the construction of code.

A description of the "Tab key" doesn't need to mention programming in the first place. This page should really focus on the origins of the key, modern applications up till the last decade or so, and that's all. I'm pulling the whole section on 'whitespace in programming' because it has nothing to do with the tab key. The HTML section is pushing it, IMHO, but it sort of completes the tables on a typewriter -> printer control code -> on screen formatting evolution. Still, the HTML part could be replaced with something more generic, like a description of tab stops in word processors. A very, very brief mention of how the tab key is overloaded for a number of different computing tasks might cut it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.174.64.232 (talk) 07:11, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Bias: "most incompatibility and conversion issues"
The following statement is biased:

"The most incompatibility and conversion issues ensue when the tab key generates HT characters and the editor is configured for tab stops spaced anything but the de facto standard, which for Unix, Unix-derived systems and older systems is every 8 characters and for Windows programming, every 4 characters. Interesting possibilities include 2 and even 3."

First, it would be interesting to see a citation that that is the most common problem. Second, the "problem" described isn't really even a problem in most cases because indentation is for indentaton, not formatting, and any code that doesn't look right unless indented a certain width is sloppy code. Third, a common problem (in my experience) is inconsistent spaces-for-tabs, where part of the program has four space indents, others have five, or two, or eight.

I move that we have a general summary of the arguments for and against. In fact, I move that the whole issue get its own article.

SnappingTurtle (talk) 19:44, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

back tab key
What is a back tab key? Is it still in use today?--92.227.164.68 (talk) 08:07, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Tabs in wiki markup
Is there a way to make a tab in wiki markup, like the &#9; in HTML? -JamesyWamesy (talk) 00:13, 31 December 2010 (UTC) However, for tabulation or indentation generally, there are better ways of doing things, like using the table feature of MediaWiki (tabular data is what the pre-electronic typesetting tab was invented for), or a double newline to make separate paragraphs, which are converted to s in HTML by the MW engine and styled such that there is a little extra space between the paragraphs, obviating the need for the outmoded practice of indenting the first-line by either spaces or tabs. Arlo James Barnes 00:59, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
 * If you need to use the tab character itself, just insert the character directly — the only reason HTML uses that numeric character entity is that XML (and HTML is either an XML application or XML-like [or rather XML was HTML-like, and both were SGML-like] language, depending on which standard one is referring to) is very restrictive about 'naked' (not encoded by an entity or ensconced in a CDATA) characters in certain parts of the XML file, allowing basically only alphanumerics plus .-_(XML Bible edition 3, page 148). [This article is a little exceedingly cautious because generally a string in the non-markup part of the document is not one of those sensitive areas.]
 * You can render a tab character with, which was described in the article, but not actually done until now. + m  t  20:04, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

de facto standardized
FORTRAN was not the origin of the default setting of tab stops at 8 spaces. FORTRAN statements started in column 7, so FORTRAN would had favored tab stops at 6 spaces. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.145.54.158 (talk) 17:31, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

No mention of the synonym 'hard tab'
When discussing indentation in source code it is common to refer to the usage of a tab as a 'hard tab', in contrast to a 'soft tab'. This is mentioned on the Indentation and Indent style pages. Should it be referenced here?

Dukedave (talk) 21:53, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Usage in computer games
How did this go unnoticed? The TAB key is used in almost all multiplayer games to show scores and in singleplayer games it still has usage where it often shows the world map or the player's inventory, its usage goes back from DOOM(1994) where it was used to show the level's map. I will try to edit the page with that info, the problem is that I do not have any sources. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.93.153.156 (talk) 08:12, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

I really need a tab character. Does anyone have one I can use?
I came to this page looking for a tab character I could copy-paste. However I can't seem to find one on the page. Please help! (This is actually serious. I will go back to Google and see if I can find one somewhere else.) - 91.125.149.132 (talk) 00:04, 21 April 2017 (UTC)
 * This is not easy to do with XML/HTML since any whitespace (including tabs) is converted to a space character. You might or might not be able to copy the tab character between the periods here: .&#9;. I see it with Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge. + m t  04:36, 21 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks! I'm the original poster from above, was laughing to myself that I had this problem again and checked back here. Page bookmarked! - 86.148.133.198 (talk) 23:35, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Suprisingly enough that works, at least with Chrome and pasting into a terminal on Linux.Spitzak (talk) 18:10, 21 April 2017 (UTC)
 * The article explains this very clearly: write  or   in HTML. In Windows you can write it directly with Alt codes: 1) press the Alt button; 2) enter 09 on the Numpad keys; 3) release Alt.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 18:42, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

Biased commentary: Eradicating? 8-character tab stops
"Many IDEs, especially on Windows, use a default horizontal tab size of 4, yet this has failed to eradicate the 8 standard." Is it really necessary to speak of eradicating a long standing de facto standard? That seems a bit... editorializing. While it may be true that some Windows IDEs default to 4 character hard tab indents, this isn't some sort of conquest. Windows hasn't "eradicated" the LF-only line ending standard either. --Mr z (talk) 07:59, 13 August 2017 (UTC)
 * No it hasn't but I felt that they possibly intended to do such an eradication back when they felt all-powerful. It is also true that a size of 4 would probably be a bit more useful as you could make tab-only indented code that is readable, so such eradication would actually be a positive result. But I like the new wording better anyway.Spitzak (talk) 18:25, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

& Tab; illegal?
"In HTML the horizontal tab is coded using [..] or &Tab" is true I assume for HTML, but isn't for MediaWiki. See my edit summary (that actually translated the former to [invisible] tab). Possibly MediaWiki should be changed, or if not (internal) pages pointing to the former only, but should this page here mention MediaWiki (as internal pages point to this page)? comp.arch (talk) 10:55, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

Tab separated values are common
Somebody added a "DUBIOUS" tag to the statement that "Tab-separated values (TSV) are a common, de facto standard". I'm not sure why someone would consider that dubious as I've seen them quite a bit. I'm coming from a UNIX background where traditional tools like sort, awk, and diff have worked with TSV for aeons, but UNIX never bothered with CSV (due to CSV's weird escape syntax). TSV is not just for old fogeys like me. They are still used: Want to parse the latest Unicode standard? Well, [Unihan_Readings.txt], among other data files, is in TSV. The only thing dubious about the statement is whether TSV is a de facto standard. In my humble opinion, the article should drop the phrase "de facto" and simply state that “Tab-separated values (TSV) is a common standard”. TSV has been well described by the [United States Library of Congress]. Note that the same page also states that, "The Library of Congress Recommended Formats Statement (RFS) includes TSV as a preferred format for datasets." 24.16.239.30 (talk) 01:20, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

reason for 8 space tabs
i find this line dubious:

"Despite the fact that five characters were the typical paragraph indentation on typewriters at that time, the horizontal tab size of eight evolved because as a power of two it was easier to calculate with the limited digital electronics available."

earlier in the paragraph it mentions that vertical tabs were 6 characters, so printers obviously had the technology for this.

also, if you need a power of two that's close to 5, why not choose 4?

i was always under the impression that this wide tab stop was for printing tables of numbers, such as in a TSV file. 8-space tabs are also useful for programming languages like assembly which are formatted into multiple columns. Binarycat64 (talk) 05:23, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

editor's confusion about HTS
The mention of horizontal tab set gives as example a C1 control for HTS (without context), and mixes it with similar verbiage about vertical tabs, pretending to cite ISO 6429 but omitting the widely-supported 7-bit form ESC H (see for example xterm's documentation). TEDickey (talk) 23:16, 9 April 2024 (UTC)


 * ISO defines HTS as being ESC+H. It is exactly the same thing. Spitzak (talk) 09:51, 10 April 2024 (UTC)