I forgot to mention: > but if you use the right tab width (and many projects mark it inside the files with a hint e.g. Emacs understands so that won't be an is

I forgot to mention: > but if you use the right tab width (and many projects mark it inside the files with a hint e.g. Emacs understands so that won't be an issue) - then it becomes a non problem too. This isn't going to work when you're looking at a diff/patch, emailing an excerpt or otherwise looking at the code outside of a particular editor.