Hacker News Reader

I think you've misunderstood the use of semantic here - it's semantic for all text files. Instead of describing very exactly 'put 8 spaces here' you're saying 'for some reason this line needs to be indented once, take this information display this as you wish.'

> Indentation is semantic only in Python

And in Haskell. And in Nim. And in Haml. And in Sass. And in YAML.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-side_rule#Off-side_rule_la...

Indentation is semantic has in it carry a meaning. We are not talking about how a specific language use it.

As for Python, it doesn't use space. It can use both spaces and tabs (but not mixed within the same file). It's just that PEP-8 require spaces, but not every project/library follow PEP-8.

In those languages where it is not semantic, proper indentation still gives visual clues to the semantics: With proper indentation one can read programs in lots of languages even without their specific semantic markers. A simple way to see this is to configure your editor's syntax highlighting to use the background color for parenthesis, semicolons or whatever the markers are in your language of choice.