This is a plateful!
Stripping "incidental" whitespace is an attractive target of
opportunity; the real question is, can we do it right enough of the
time, and when we get it wrong, is there an easy way for the user to
recover and get what they want?
Kevin described this as: "find the magic rectangle"; that there should
be a rectangle enclosing the snippet that sets apart the incidental
whitespace from the essential. In your examples, most of the time, the
magic rectangle is, well, the actual rectangle in your text.
Examples;
String a = """
+--------+
| text |
+--------+
"""; // first characters in first column?
