Whitespace

SyntaxEditor can optionally display whitespace characters, change tab size, do tab to space conversion, and more.

Visible Whitespace

SyntaxEditor can optionally display whitespace characters when the SyntaxEditor.IsWhitespaceVisible property is set to true.

Tabs and spaces visible in the editor

Tab Size

The term tab size refers to the number of spaces that a tab character appears to represent. SyntaxEditor allows you to configure the tab size. The default tab size is 4, meaning tabs render in the space of four space characters.

A tab size of eight spaces, instead of four, which is the default

The tab size can be altered by setting the ITextDocument.TabSize property. When this property is changed, the related TabSizeChanged event is raised.

Tabs to Spaces Conversion While Typing

Tabs that are typed can be automatically converted to space characters if the ITextDocument.AutoConvertTabsToSpaces property is set to true.

Backspacing to the Previous Tab Stop

When ITextDocument.AutoConvertTabsToSpaces is true, pressing the Bkspace key before the first non-whitespace character of a line will backspace to the previous tab stop by default. Set the SyntaxEditor.CanBackspaceOverSpacesToTabStop property is set to false to alter this behavior to only allow backspacing a single space at a time.

Tabification and Tab to Space Conversion

The IEditorViewTextChangeActions interface, available via the IEditorView.TextChangeActions property, provides several methods for doing tab/space conversions within the currently selected text.

The TabifySelectedLines and UntabifySelectedLines methods convert leading line whitespace from spaces to tabs and back in the current view selection.

The ConvertSpacesToTabs and ConvertTabsToSpaces methods convert all whitespace from spaces to tabs and back in the current view selection.

Whitespace Trim Modes

SyntaxEditor supports automatic trimming of whitespace under certain scenarios. The WhitespaceTrimModes enumeration is a flags enumeration that specifies the types of whitespace trim modes that are available, such as trimming trailing whitespace on paste and trailing whitespace on text replacements.

Set the IEditorDocument.WhitespaceTrimModes property to control the automatic whitespace trim behavior.