Andrew Lentvorski wrote:
Ralph Shumaker wrote:
I never understood why spaces and tabs cannot be displayed with
something visible.
Because a tab is not a printing character, it is a *control*
character, and its semantics are poorly defined.
Tab is *not* just n spaces. It is "move the head/platen to tab stop"
and "tab stop" is defined by the end user.
Be that as it may, that still doesn't address ASCII 032 not having the
option of being visible so as to visually be able to differentiate it
from a tab, on screen that is. On the printouts, I would prefer things
be as they are, except maybe being able to tell the printer to use the
computer's definition of the tab. I think someone mentioned that the
printer *always* uses 8.
I like when the 0 (zero) is made distinctive with a dot in the
middle. I never liked that 0 looks so similar to O and in some
places are almost indistinguishable from one another. The 1 and the
l (and sometimes I) are almost as bad. There is no reason why they
have to look that much alike.
What you want is called a programming font.
http://keithdevens.com/wiki/ProgrammerFonts
I'm not so sure I necessarily want "A font for programming must be
monospaced", but the rest of the description sounds great! I like
monospace in email (especially when doing or viewing ASCII art). I like
monospace on the command line, vim, but probably not in Firefox.
I'll check it out.
But I distinctly remember on my Amiga computer being able to modify
fonts myself. And a quick search for "linux font editor" thru Vivísimo,
the first page of 20 results netted 9 pages of interest.
Come to think of it, does anyone know how I can modify the fonts that
show up in gnome terminal and vim, and even the console while I'm at
it, and any other fonts that are used by programs like firefox and
thunderbird? Come to think of it, I can't be the only one who has
ever wanted such a thing. Is anyone aware of fonts already so modified?
No *font* modification is capable of delivering that behavior.
-a
"that" behavior? Are you talking specifically about the console? If
so, when my computer boots up, while linux is loading, near the
beginning, I see the fonts change. I don't know what causes that
change. It happens in an instant, and I'm usually not paying specific
attention to see the change. Maybe the screen resolution was changed
slightly for some reason causing an *appearance* of change of font. And
several of the font editors I found above seem to suggest that they can
modify the console font.
But I don't see why any of the other fonts I mentioned should be
untouchable. It would be nice to have all fonts on my system show a dot
or a slash in the zero. It would be nice them all have a very short
horizontal half roof on the left side of a vertical line for the lower
case L (whether it has a base or not, I don't care). It would be nice
for all fonts on my system to have a down sloping half roof on the left
side of a vertical line with a full base for the number one. It would
be nice for them all to have a vertical line with the top half replaced
by a small but visible dot for a lower case I and an upper case I that
looks like the cross section of an I-beam.
But just as nice, I would like to have fonts that have a space (ASCII
032) that shows something visible on the screen but is invisible in a
printout. Even if tabs don't show anything visible, at least something
visible for ASCII 032 would visually distinguish it from the tab.
In some situations, I would even like to see something visual for
end-of-line (particularly in vim and cat). This is not that big of an
issue tho because I can use reg ex " $" or " $". But it would still
be nice to see it visually. With large media nowadays, it's not as big
an issue, but when I was very tight on space with a program I was
growing daily, trailing spaces, tho not a problem for the program, were
a potential problem on storage. And I don't know why, but I just don't
like the thought nowadays of a single extra ASCII 032 or tab
unnecessarily placed at the end of a line causing the file to use up an
extra cluster. Several extras making that even _more_ likely. I
haven't been tight on space often lately, tho, so I don't feel it as
strongly at the moment. Now it's more a matter of the principle of the
thing. I suppose I could make a script to use sed to clip trailing
spaces and tabs, and invoke it only on files of interest. Maybe even a
script that examines all files for such trailers and report only the
ones that contain them. Hmmm. Interesting ideas.
--
Ralph
--------------------
The most arduous task a reformer has to execute, is to make people think; to
rouse them from that lethargy, which, like the mantle of sleep, covers them in
repose and contentment.
--Noah Webster, 1789
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