Support Tabs for Indentation, Spaces for Alignment in editor #3

bugwhisperer commented 2026年03月25日 18:10:57 +01:00

Summary

This feature will support the "indent with tabs, align with spaces" principle/convention (used by gofmt and many style guides). Files would look correct at any tab-width setting whilst keeping the flexibility to work in spaces-only environments. Auto-indent would reduce friction for heavily indented code/text.

Conditions of Satisfaction

• Config changes
  • expand_tabs (bool, default false): when false, Tab inserts a literal \t; when true, Tab inserts shift_width spaces.
  • shift_width config (int, default 4, range 1–16): number of spaces inserted per Tab press when expand_tabs = true. Existing tab_spaces retains its meaning as the visual column-width of \t in view/normal mode.
• Tab display expansion: during the highlight pass, \t characters are expanded to spaces (tab-stop math) so that chroma colouring and line-wrapping see consistent column widths. Edit-mode tab display continues to follow terminal tab stops (textarea widget limitation).
• Auto-indent on Enter / o / O: when the user opens a new line, leading whitespace from the current line is copied to the new line, placing the cursor after the indentation. Works with both tab and space indentation; reuses the existing lineIndent() helper.
• :TabsToSpaces command / "Convert Tabs to Spaces" palette entry: replaces every \t in the active buffer with tab_spaces spaces and marks the file modified.
• Both new config keys should be vault overridable (following the same pattern as tab_spaces).

External Resources

N/A

## Summary This feature will support the "indent with tabs, align with spaces" principle/convention (used by `gofmt` and many style guides). Files would look correct at any tab-width setting whilst keeping the flexibility to work in spaces-only environments. Auto-indent would reduce friction for heavily indented code/text. ## Conditions of Satisfaction - [x] **Config changes** - [x] `expand_tabs` (bool, default `false`): when `false`, Tab inserts a literal `\t`; when `true`, Tab inserts `shift_width` spaces. - [x] `shift_width` config (int, default 4, range 1–16): number of spaces inserted per Tab press when `expand_tabs = true`. Existing `tab_spaces` retains its meaning as the visual column-width of `\t` in view/normal mode. - [x] **Tab display expansion**: during the highlight pass, `\t` characters are expanded to spaces (tab-stop math) so that chroma colouring and line-wrapping see consistent column widths. Edit-mode tab display continues to follow terminal tab stops (textarea widget limitation). - [x] **Auto-indent on Enter / `o` / `O`**: when the user opens a new line, leading whitespace from the current line is copied to the new line, placing the cursor after the indentation. Works with both tab and space indentation; reuses the existing `lineIndent()` helper. - [x] **`:TabsToSpaces` command / "Convert Tabs to Spaces" palette entry**: replaces every `\t` in the active buffer with `tab_spaces` spaces and marks the file modified. - [x] Both new config keys should be vault overridable (following the same pattern as `tab_spaces`). ## External Resources N/A