Indentation problem on tabs when using a proportional font

[Lianril]

Hi,

I use the font MS Reference Sans Serif, 8pt. In my texts I use blanks for identation and tabs, always 2 blanks. The text is always correctly indented and the lines show exactly under each other. Also the tabs always show perfectly under each other. This worked fine although this is not a fixed-sized font (its a proportional font).

Since I currently updated from v16.xx to version 17.20.0.1014, this is broken. The indentation works, but the tabs are not right. Maybe I didn't set the configuration properly or perhaps there is a new configuration setting. But I didn't see anything.

Can you please help me fix this?

Thanks alot.

[Lianril]

I just updated to build 1016. But this is still not working, please see attached image.

[Mofi]

I don't understand the problem. You use "MS Reference Sans Serif" which is a proportional font. That means every character has its own width. Character 'i' is smaller than character 'W' and the space character is also small and use a different width.

The characters of a non proportional or fixed-width font like Courier New have all the same width. Character 'i' has the same width as character 'W' and space character.

If you have configured UltraEdit to use spaces in place of tabs with a proportional font the display is not surprising for me.

BTW: Graphic file format PNG is better for screenshots than JPG. PNG use a lossless compression, is supported by every application supporting displaying graphics and produce for screenshots usually smaller files than JPG because of the low number of colors used in a screenshot.

[Lianril]

Please look at this picture from UltraEdit version 16.00.0.1032. The configuration here is:
tabs are blanks, indentation is 2, tab width is 2, font is ms reference sans serif 8pt

[Mofi]

Well, I have never worked in UltraEdit with a proportional font and therefore don't know how previous versions aligned text with tabs.

Here is what I see with UE v17.20. It looks like enabling View - Show Spaces/Tabs improves the alignment. Don't know why there is a difference at all between displaying the text normal and with showing other characters for spaces/tabs. But in general it is not advisable to use a proportional font when working with tab delimited characters.

However, if it was better in previous versions of UltraEdit, you should report the display problem to IDM support by email because this is a user-to-user forum. We can only suggest to use a fixed-width font or play with the Font Quality setting in Editor Display - Advanced and check if that makes the display better.

[Lianril]

Thanks Mofi for your help anyways! Your donation is really appreciated.

I mostly use proportional fonts also in IDE's like Eclipse because those fonts are simply better readable. In UltraEdit I love this feature because I can also maintain some kind of structure which let me organize things fitting for me.
Do you know a good readable non-proportional font? I experimented with Consolas, Bitstream and others.

Nonetheless: you are right, I have to ask the IDM people.

Many thanks.

[Mofi]

Take a look on Best Font for Ultraedit. I'm using from the beginning simply Courier New and after more than 10 years I'm get used to this font although it is not the best non-proportional font.

It's the first time that I looked on a text file with tabs using a proportional font. I'm wondering now how UltraEdit handles this situation. Word processing applications like MS Word or OpenOffice Write handle tab stops on base of in, cm, mm. A text editor can't do that and uses number of spaces. But 2 spaces are together with font MS Sans Serif smaller than charater M or W. So UltraEdit cannot really use spaces when the font is a proportional font. Perhaps UltraEdit uses the medium width of the characters or the width of the largest character. I don't know. However, the effect with not good aligned | should not appear.

[Nologic]

Some fonts I use:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=OGWEQ55E

Namely:
Consolas
DejaVu Sans Mono
Envy Code R