Differentiate between tabs (tab stops) and offsets (indents)

[davem1972]

Check for existing issues

• [X] Completed

Describe the feature

Some editors, (not all!) differentiate between tabs (i.e. tab stops), which simply bumps the cursor to the next tab column and indents/offsets for program statements. For example in Emacs, you can set up tab-width: 8 and c-basic-offset: 3 which means that a tab bumps you to the next column on multiple of 8's (tab stop) but the indent for a if () { ... statement in C would be 3 spaces, not another tab:

    if (foo > bar) {
       printf("foo wins\n");
    } else {
       if (baz > bar) {
          printf("baz wins\n"); // comment is tabbed
       }
    }

Note that the 1st column starts with a tab character, but the indents are 3 spaces. The // comment is tabbed over.

The editors that support this distinction between a tab stop and an indent that I know of are Visual Studio (not VSCode), Emacs, vi/vim, BBEdit. The editors "smart indenting" usually knows the difference between an statement offset indent and an actual tab (although sometimes in Emacs it's necessary to use C-q TAB to get a tab when it wants to indent).

The use-case here is a somewhat large, but "mature" code-base that uses tabs and offsets differently.

If applicable, add mockups / screenshots to help present your vision of the feature

No response

[davem1972]

FWIW, this is the PR incl. discussion for VSCode to support this feature:

With this PR, you can use the following settings to achieve TAB-8 and 3-offset/indent:

{
  "editor.indentSize": 3,
  "editor.insertSpaces": false,
  "editor.tabSize": 8
}