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#parinfer
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2018-07-31
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misha16:07:17

@shaunlebron check this out http://nickgravgaard.com/elastic-tabstops/ nothing specific, just think you might find it interesting

shaunlebron19:07:52

@misha thanks, interesting

shaunlebron19:07:10

> The problem is that we’re using tabs and spaces to format text for aesthetic reasons rather than treating them semantically - tabs are for indenting and aligning text, spaces are for separating keywords.

shaunlebron19:07:04

so historically, a tab character \t tells the a text editor to insert spaces until the next tabstop, which is a configurable constant for the whole file

shaunlebron19:07:50

I wonder if there should just be a new standard type of character \T for an elastic tab—to insert spaces until the next elastic tabstop, determined from context rather than configuration

shaunlebron20:07:34

and maybe editors could ignore all spaces after a \T if they recognize the character, and incompatible editors would just render the spaces and ignore the \T

shaunlebron20:07:06

anyway, fun to imagine how to make this interesting idea practical