Arguments

Alignment with elastic tabstops

Pro arguments for elastic tabstops

  • looks more visually pleasing

  • visual cues for inherent structure and bugs

  • more code is aligned for easy vertical selection

  • allow pretty printing characters (e.g. ⇒ instead of =>)

Contra arguments against elastic tabstops

  • not widely supported => but that can change

  • code looks different in other viewers => can be mitigated with optional alignment spaces

  • mitigation solutions conflict with linters and inspectors => linters be configured accordingly

  • problematic in some languages => needs more language awareness

  • extra smart alignment produce fights with word processor => behaviour is predictable

  • don’t waste time formatting code (Prettier: “stop all the on-going debates over styles”) => adopt an auto-formatter for elastic tabstops

Rendering with proportional fonts

Pro arguments for proportional fonts

  • narrow and wide characters look more pleasing

  • different text weights look more pleasing

  • allow various styles for different kinds of code (like sans for code, serif for strings, bold for keywords, italic for comments etc.)

  • optical cues for typos

<div><span class="highlight">M</span></div>
<div><spam class="highlight">M</spam></div>

Contra arguments against proportional fonts

External discussions