Elastic tabstops (2006)
12 points by runxiyu
12 points by runxiyu
I like this idea so much that I have it implemented for code examples on my website (see the code block in this section): https://riki.house/text-editor-wishlist#Proportional-fonts
I didn't see this 2006 article when I first thought of this though, rather was inspired by the case for proportional fonts on Input's website.
Myself I use Recursive, which can be tweaked to be proportional-but-wide with a variable axis.
Oh what could have been!
Some decade ago, I tried using horizontal alignment between lines to make my code more clear, but my colleagues didn't care for it. At that moment I learned to stop worrying and learned to love the autoformatter.
Directionally, code formatting and display will play an even smaller role in the future.
Autoformatters are awesome. They remove a lot more cognitive overhead than you'd think.
cargo fmt has been formatting my code for a long while, but it doesn't touch comments. So for a long time I was manually word-wrapping my block comments. And I knew there must be tools for that, but for some reason I was skeptical: I didn't want to install another VS Code plugin, especially for something as trivial as wrapping text. It couldn't possibly streamline my editing by any significant amount, right?
It saved me so much energy. Maybe it's slightly less perfectionist than my artisanal word wrapping, but I don't care; the mental burden is gone.