StrongED tabs

Is there any reason why I cannot select a custom width for my tab characters? The box is there but it is greyed out…

I would like to have it set universally to 2 spaces (actual space character)

That option was added when I reworked the configuration window but I’ve never got round to implementing it.

You can click Menu over the Tab field on the Infobar at the bottom. Open the dialogue box attached to the Tabstops entry and enter 2* into the writable icon. Press Apply when done and Tabs should work as you want.

Thanks Fred – I’ve done that now and aside from strange line-breaking I’m getting quite happy with StrongEd as my default editor!

If I set my “Hardwrap” to 80 and then untick all the Hardwrap options except “Colour lines too long” will not wrap anything but colour in lines that exceed 80 characters?

Is there a way to do this globally or would I have to do it to each type that I use?

If Hardwrap is on then text will always be wrapped regardless of how the other options are set. To see if there are any lines longer than 80 characters you could use the CheckWidth function.

Another option is to set the wrapwidth to automatic using the Infobar (click on the width indicator) then drag the window wider to see if any lines are longer than 80.

Configuring mode specific options using the choices window means it will only affect the mode you’re in so you have to do this for each mode separately. You can set things globally by loading all Choices files into StrongED and doing a search&replace over them. It’s too late right now to go into details but if you want to know I can describe the procedure.

Just looking at the HTML Choices file — can I change it to something like:

Tabs_InsertAs:Spaces
Tabs_DisplayAs:Spaces
Tabs_TabWidth:2

To get 2 space characters inserted for every tab?

No, that won’t work as Tabs_TabWidth is interpreted in binary fashion. It’s either 4 or not 4, where not 4 is always taken to be 8. Even if it did work, it would not have helped you as Tabs_TabWidth specifies the display width of a real tab character.

You need to use the Tabstops setting. What I’ve neglected to mention is how to set the tabstops definition permanently. This is done by using the Tabstops keyword in the ModeFile: Tabstops <tab> 2*

Save the updated ModeFile then use the Mode Choices to set Insert tabs to As spaces to align with tabstops definition and save the choices.

Hopefully that’ll give you what you want. If it doesn’t then the only option left that I can see is to tie a different function to the Tab key, maybe InsertStr(" ").