Author Topic: Special Characters (tabs and spaces)  (Read 1349 times)

miffed

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Special Characters (tabs and spaces)
« on: July 05, 2021, 10:04:42 PM »
I still use SE v13 because it lets me change the appearance of tabs and spaces (see attachment).
The version from 2008 is still better than the version from 2021.
I want to upgrade, but as the help screen says in v25, "the graphic displayed for tab and space characters is not configurable."

Dennis

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Re: Special Characters (tabs and spaces)
« Reply #1 on: July 06, 2021, 03:27:07 PM »
I am not 100% sure what your question is.  We draw a dot for spaces and an arrow for tabs, you can even configure the color for special characters (tabs, spaces, line endings, etc).  We replaced doing character replacements for tab and space with the graphical technique years ago because it looks much better and makes the position of tab stops more clear.

miffed

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Re: Special Characters (tabs and spaces)
« Reply #2 on: July 06, 2021, 03:56:15 PM »
Just an observastion, but in the form of a question it would be, why are tabs and spaces the only special characters that cannot be configured, especially when they were configurable in the past?
The 2008 version lets me to do everything you mention, but I can also pick my own graphical elements for tabs and spaces, just like the other special characters. You didn't really "replace" anything, you just removed the ability to configure tabs and spaces. It's ironic you called the current tab an "arrow" because in my 2008 version I have my tabs configured to show the actual arrow character.
"Looks much better" is in the eye of the beholder.

Dennis

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Re: Special Characters (tabs and spaces)
« Reply #3 on: July 06, 2021, 04:41:51 PM »
Could you post a screen grab (preferable the same example I sent you) so that I can compare what you saw with v13 to what we have now.

miffed

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Re: Special Characters (tabs and spaces)
« Reply #4 on: July 06, 2021, 05:50:57 PM »
I really only have a problem with spaces.
I never use tabs, so the new tabs are fine, but I still don't understand why we can't change them.
The space character in v25 is almost imperceptible in my font of choice (Lucida Console).
In v13, I changed the space to a fatter dot, so I can keep using Lucida Console.
In v25, I must give up my font or give up being able to see spaces.

Dennis

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Re: Special Characters (tabs and spaces)
« Reply #5 on: July 06, 2021, 06:04:45 PM »
What font size are you running at?

I did notice one annoyance with our spaces/tabs drawing, they do not seem to scale up when you are using larger font sizes.  I am going to look at fixing that for the next release.

miffed

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Re: Special Characters (tabs and spaces)
« Reply #6 on: July 06, 2021, 06:09:21 PM »
Spaces and tabs also do not reflect "bold", even though carriage return does, and other special characters do.

Dennis

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Re: Special Characters (tabs and spaces)
« Reply #7 on: July 07, 2021, 05:11:07 PM »
The space/tab drawing scaling in proportion to font size will be improved in the next release (v26).  I am not going to address the bold issue, but have noted the inconsistency.

mjdl

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Re: Special Characters (tabs and spaces)
« Reply #8 on: July 07, 2021, 08:02:10 PM »
Why not simply keep the tab/space special character drawing in its present form, but provide an option to lighten or darken it?  Sometimes a light grey (whether on a light or dark background) just isn't that distinctive and easy to read, and scaling alone won't really solve the issue.

Dennis

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Re: Special Characters (tabs and spaces)
« Reply #9 on: July 07, 2021, 08:20:40 PM »
The color is configurable.  Tools > Options > Appearance > Colors > General > Special Characters

jporkkahtc

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Re: Special Characters (tabs and spaces)
« Reply #10 on: July 08, 2021, 08:23:32 PM »
Nice - I never noticed the color option for special characters :-)