Re: elastic tabstops implemented for GTK

["Gustavo J. A. M. Carneiro" <gjc inescporto pt>]

Personally I think this is a terrible idea because it breaks
compatibility with other editors.  If each editor interprets tabs in its
own way, then when you save a file from one editor and open in another
one it will appear all wrong.

And how will this look e.g. to Python, which generally doesn't even like
tabs?  Variable width tabs will likely cause havoc in Python programs...

Now, if you did the exact same thing, but behind the scenes inserted
spaces instead of tab characters, then it would be nice.

On Qua, 2007-08-29 at 07:42 +0200, Nick Gravgaard wrote:
> On 29/08/2007, Alex Jones <alex weej com> wrote:
> >
> >  Hi again, Nick
> >
> >  On Fri, 2007-07-13 at 10:46 +0200, Nick Gravgaard wrote:
> >  Thanks Alex,
> >
> > The proportional font stuff is really just a nice side effect - this
> > idea has all sorts of nice implications. Off the top of my head,
> > imagine a program like ls that outputs a list of directories and
> > files. At the moment ls needs to be aware of the number of columns of
> > the console to which it is writing, and then it inserts spaces and
> > newlines to make things line up. Resizing the console has no effect on
> > the layout. Now, I haven't gotten round to implementing word wrap yet,
> > but imagine if ls output a simple tab delimited list of directories
> > and files instead, and the console undertood elastic tabstops (with
> > word wrap implemented). Resizing the console would work, as would
> > proportional fonts. Also, imagine how much easier piping between
> > programs becomes when simple tab delimited text streams works like
> > this!
> >
> > There are many other potential uses too :)
> >
> > Nick
> >
> >
> >  How is this coming along? Have you opened bugzilla issues on this yet? I
> > really want to start using this!
> 
> I've been busy recently with other stuff, so at the moment I'm still
> hacking my gedit patch to turn it into a plugin. Paolo Maggi (main
> gedit developer) told me on the gedit list:
> 
> "In this way it will be easier for other people to experiment with your
> idea and may be we could start including your plugin in gedit-plugins if
> the other members of the gedit team agree."
> 
> See:
> http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gedit-list/2007-July/msg00035.html
> 
> Does anyone know the process for getting the elastic tabstop
> functionality into the official GTK branch?
> 
> Nick
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-- 
Gustavo J. A. M. Carneiro
<gjc inescporto pt> <gustavo users sourceforge net>
"The universe is always one step beyond logic" -- Frank Herbert