Elastic tabstops?

[philbooth]

Does UE support or are there any plans to support elastic tabstops (a la http://nickgravgaard.com/elastictabstops/)?

[Mofi]

No and no! In UltraEdit you can specify multiple tab stop values similar to MS WORD which is especially useful for languages like assembler for example. And UltraEdit automatically aligns a new line on RETURN on the first non whitespace character of the line above if auto-indent is enabled, with the same whitespace characters as the line above. But elastic tab stops as explained on the referenced page are not supported.

I also have never seen a programmer which uses proportional fonts. A proportional font is used in a text editor normally by users writting normal text or HTML, but for programs and scripts it does not really make sense in my point of view. Some people may have a different opinion and use proportional fonts also for program code. If they are happy with that, why not.

A few days ago we have had in our department a discussion about new guidelines for C/C++ program code because of a new big project. One half of the team wanted tabs and the others spaces. As I demonstrated what happens with program code which uses for indentation tabs with 2 or 3 as tab stop value

• after copying a code snippet into an text email;
• when comparing 2 versions of a source file with a compare tool to see the changes last made;
• just viewing some source files with the integrated viewer of Total Commander after a search in all source files;
• looking on the list file created by the compiler with the original C code as comments;
• debugging the program with a third-party debugging tool;
• copying a source code snippet into a forum post to get help by others;
• changing the tab stop value later and what happens then with the line comments;
• running several replace in source files with mixed tabs and spaces;
• running a find in source files with tabs with find results printed to an edit window, output window or UE's list lines containing string dialog;

the discussion about using tabs or spaces for indentation immediately ended with the decision to use spaces. Tabs with a fixed or elastic tab stop value are good if used consistently (and not normally tabs and sometimes spaces) and a complete source file or a code snippet is never viewed in any other application as the editor used for writing the code. But in all the situations listed above tabs are horrible for the alignment of the code and the line comments.

[999999]

Geez. What a response. Some people prefer elastic tabstops, just like some people prefer tabs or spaces. Never mind their reasons.

[bulgrien]

Mofi is quite passionate against the use of tabs. =) Nevertheless, he's a user just like you and me. If you really would like to see elastic tabstops in UltraEdit, then the user-to-user forums isn't the place to express it. Send an enhancement request to IDM via email. If enough users request the feature then there is a chance that it could eventually become a configurable option in some future version of the product.

[thofei]

And to add fuel to (Mofi's) fire (sorry for that ), I just got this response from IDM:

Thank you for your message. We have had other users request this functionality. I will add your name to the list. Our developers are
considering this for a future release.

So it seems there were already some requests for that functionality and if others want that as well, just follow the link Bulgrien posted, it's a matter of one minute.

But I fully agree with it being optional, because actually I agree with Mofi's reasoning, in an environment where more people work with the same sources, this might lead into problems.

Cya
Thomas