These days just use expand tab, in an age of online code review tools etc it's just better not to have to configure every system to interpret tabs to your given number of spaces - just write the damn spaces into the file.

> "it's just better not to have to configure every system to interpret tabs to your given number of spaces"

The entire point of "tabs to indent; spaces to align" is that you don't need to make sure everyone displays tabs the same way. If we are using that scheme and I have mine set to 4 spaces but you have yours set to 8, everything is fine. There is no problem there.

That works but takes a lot of discipline. More than any team I ever worked with had.

In my experience, the difficult part is getting people to understand it.

Yeah, but since every time someone new comes along who doesn't understand what this means (witness the replies you're getting)... no tabs. It's just easier this way.