On Mon, 13 Apr 2015, Maurice Kinal wrote to mark lewis:

 ml> it is a standard ASCII editor

 MK> 0x09 is the ASCII code for HT = (H)orizontal (T)ab. 

yes, i know... the point that i was making was that actual TAB characters are
not used by the editor due to the various known spacing problems that accompany
them...

 MK> It's implimentation, or lack of it, has little to do with ASCII
 MK> compatibility.  I am not sure if it was ever standardized as far as
 MK> how many spaces it ought to represent but I seem to recall it
 MK> usually being the equivalent of 8 spaces despite the fact it is a
 MK> 7-bit character as opposed to 8 7-bit ASCII characters such as the
 MK> ASCII 0x20 character (aka space).

8 spaces equivalence was common in a lot of stuff but i always adjusted them to
2 spaces if i could... these days they don't really mean a whole lot other than
some programs requiring them to work properly (make comes to mind)...

)\/(ark