Might I suggest a 3rd mode for showing whitespace? Currently in the Studio script editor, whitespace is shown for every empty space. Personally, I do not want to see whitespace in every scenario, such as between keywords and in strings, as examples. I see viewing whitespace as a tool to see that all code is aligned properly. I would rather see the whitespace in larger gaps of spaces, such as in tabs. Visual Studio Code has 3 (or 4) modes for viewing whitespace:
Mode 1: No whitespace is shown. This has been the default in Studio.
Mode 2: All whitespace is shown. This shows all whitespace in the script editor and is currently what Studio’s editor supports and is referred to in the parent post.
Mode 3: Whitespace is shown in instances where 2 or more spaces are present. This helps clean whitespace clutter in places like strings and between keywords where usually one does not need to see that there is whitespace. Pay close attention to the strings and keywords in the following screenshot compared to the screenshot in Mode 2.
Additionally, VS Code has an option to show whitespace only for the selected text. I don’t know how necessary this is, but here is an example gif:
In addition to this suggestion, I would like to point out that Studio’s current editor has no option to use spaces instead of tabs. Many programmers prefer spaces over tabs yet still use the tab key as it is a quick way to insert 4 (or 2) spaces in most editors if configured to use spaces instead of tabs. Could we have the option to change the tab key to insert a variable amount of spaces in lieu of tabs?
An example of where this would be useful is as follows:
In this example, we can see that using tabs can be a bit cumbersome as lining things up with a mix of spaces and tabs is quite messy and cumbersome:
Additionally, if the name of the variable is changed later, it can really mess up the formatting set up in the gif above and the programmer must fight the mix of spaces and tabs to get things to line up again. However, if the programmer sets their editor to use just spaces, it makes things much simpler are things are more consistent.
Additionally, if the name of the variable is changed in this scenario, it is easier to align things as the programmer would not need to use a mixed space/tab system.
Finally, it simply looks nicer. Look at what mixed spaces and tabs can look like:
And here is the same example with just spaces:
Wow, that’s a large reply, but I hope it shows that these are important features to myself and many others (I hope!). I am not sure how hard these features would be to implement, but I would assume that they would be pretty basic additions to the script editor.
Thanks!