The comment does well in providing context and arguments.
Lets go back to the closest thing we have for requirements for this editor…Default CLI Editor - Feature Exploration!. This discussion was based on the current state of windows and was not concerned with UNIX.
Being a simple text editor, it should not hallucinate, it should not add text one did not type, it should not change the text that was typed. If the user typed a tab character, it was because the user wanted a tab character. If you want four spaces then type four spaces.
edit should by default work like the original namesake and not hallucinate or add characters that were not typed or make assumptions.
Where do you draw the line on “smart” features? Tab should not add indent spaces? Encoding or newline mechanisms? Determining EOF newline?
I would expect it to use CRLF (on Windows) for all new newlines unless I tell it otherwise. It shouldn’t try to be smart about it. It should just do exactly what I tell it to do and nothing more.
That wouldn’t be what I would expect. Having mixed new lines in a file is generally a bad thing - the editor should pick one mode