Re: [Nano-devel] Whitespace display mode: extend it to handle newlines?

[Benno Schulenberg]

Op 26-10-18 om 01:06 schreef David Ramsey:
> One thing I've noticed with whitespace display mode for awhile is that, while
> it displays characters for tabs and spaces, it doesn't display anything for
> newlines.

Probably because it's superfluous.  The point of showing whitespace as
visible characters is: 1) to see the difference between tabs and spaces,
and 2) to see where there are trailing blanks.  Showing another character
for a newline doesn't help to distinguish anything extra (in normal mode).

> I was wondering if there's any interest in that feature, especially since
> softwrap mode can make it harder to determine where actual newlines are.

In softwrap mode it can help.  I made a patch for it long ago, but didn't
like the result: the visual cue is too small.  And nowadays, the linenumbers
toggle gives a much clearer indication of where lines start.

(Your patch has a small problem, by the way.  When in normal mode a line in
the middle of a paragraph is exactly as long as the screen is wide, press
<End> on that line and then <Home>.  See how the ↵ is printed at the start
of the next line.)

> Note that it provides no documentation yet, and also refuses to work with a
> nanorc containing a two-character whitespace string.  (I'm not sure how to fix
> the latter; maybe allow a variable-length string for whitespace, as long as
> it's between 1 and 3 characters long?)

I would be more of a mind to remove the configurability of the whitespace
replacements characters.  In the beginning, M-P worked only when the
whitespace option was given with two visible characters in the nanorc
file. But since nano-2.3.3, M-P shows visible characters by default.
Do you think that anyone has added 'set whitespace "..."' to their
nanorcs since then?  I doubt it.  And if a few people have done so, would
they be seriously inconvenienced if we dropped back to showing always dot
and chevron for space and tab?

Benno

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