full width tab glyph for editor.renderWhitespace

[henderjon]

When viewing invisible characters (editor.renderWhitespace), I would like the character/glyph used for tabs to extend across the full width of the tab (N spaces / to the next tab stop). Sublime Text 3 uses what looks like an emdash(?) or essentially a line than runs to the next tab stop. VSCode uses a single character width arrow.

In descending order of preference:

• a line that extends the full tab width (to the next tab stop) like ST3
• an arrow that extends the full tab width (to the next tab stop)

[chmln]

Here are screenshots for illustration.

Sublime:

Code:

Seems like a minor detail at first but IMO the arrows look quite unpleasant.
Since Code already renders spaces nicely with dots, it'd be great if tabs weren't discriminated either 😄

[chmln]

For those who don't like waiting:
See https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=chmln.better-whitespace

[mattnb]

+1.

I'm giving VSCode a shot after coming from ST3 and while this is a subtle change it's absolutely the sort of thing that would keep me from converting. I'm someone who uses 2 character indentation and likes to see whitespace, so I find the arrows to be massively distracting.

[eamodio]

If not full-width, I'd love to have control over the glyph character used itself.

[CoericK]

Here are screenshots for illustration.

Sublime:

Code:

Seems like a minor detail at first but IMO the arrows look quite unpleasant.
Since Code already renders spaces nicely with dots, it'd be great if tabs weren't discriminated either 😄

Hey @chmln I'm going crazy, how can I enable arrows? I Did "editor.renderWhitespace": "all" or boundary but it still shows dots instead of arrows

[kopepasah]

@CoericK dots indicate spaces, while arrows indicate tabs.

[kopepasah]

@alexandrudima any update on the ability to show a different character/glyph for tabs?

[hfelix]

On my case it was no showing the arrow on tab. Just dots on tab and spaces.
I needed to set:
"editor.detectIndentation": false,

Then the spaces still dots and tab became arrow.

[steveoh]

I'd love to have control over the glyph character used for tab and space

[xaxazak]

I also find this a significant negative coming from ST3.
I would add that if this gets added, it would be nice to be able to customize the line's width, margins, color and opacity.

[danky78]

It would be nice if we can choose two characters, the fill one and the right one.
So if we choose "-" and ">" a tab that would span across 5 characters would render as: ---->
And we can use any other unicode character that renders pretty with our font, like: ──▷