It is a task perfectly suited for automation though... I'm not sure why you think it should be any harder to automate than any other style. Find your base ind

It is a task perfectly suited for automation though... I'm not sure why you think it should be any harder to automate than any other style. Find your base indentation level, insert the proper number of tabs. Find your beautification alignment level (already done by most autoindenters. Any autointender that doesn't do this is leaving this task to the user anyway regardless of the scheme being used...), insert the proper number of spaces. http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Indent_with_tabs,_align_with_spaces http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Indent_with_tabs,_align_with_space... http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/SmartTabs http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/SmartTabs Intellij also has this capability, and likely other editors as well. I prefer to do it by hand, but that is nothing but my personal preference. It has nothing to do with the scheme itself. If someone is opposed to doing things by hand, they don't need to do this by hand.