Elastic tabstops

[Tony Balinski]

Quoting Yann <cactux at gmail.com>:

> 2006/7/4, Michael Smith <michael.smith at thalesatm.com>:
> > > Anyway, I just subscribed to this discuss list after reading this
> article:
> > > - http://nickgravgaard.com/elastictabstops/
> >
> > I can't access the web from here. Could you summarise that site in a
> > post to the list?
>
> I think the site was slashdotted, but it seems ok now.
> Tell me if you can't access it, I would then post it here, I don't
> think the author would mind.
>
> Tbas are spaces may be a problem when sharing code among developpers.
> If you are alone on your code, just do as you wish :) But when
> sharing, each person has its own preferences : n spaces (usually 2, 4
> or 8), or tabs, or a mix.
> With this idea of elastic tabs, the editor spots groups of lines with
> the same kind of tabs, then align the text across these lines on
> columns. Its difficult to describe, but the article has a kind of
> screenshot which is far clearer than my text here :-/
> There is also some code available (java), in public domain, so it can
> be used anywhere.

The picture shows what you would get if you used tabs as column
separators rather than spacers, except on the left-hand edge, where
they are used to indent. The column groups are broken by empty lines.

Although I like the way it looks, since it is not the way tabbing works
everywhere I would recommend not using this mechanism and to stick with
spaces and emulated tabs. Files created in nedit shouldn't look too
different when opened with vim, emacs or cat. With this handling of tabs
we would lose that.

Tony