A tab stop on a typewriter is a location where the carriage movement is halted by an adjustable end stop. Tab stops are set manually, and pressing the

tab key The tab key (abbreviation of tabulator key or tabular key) on a keyboard is used to advance the cursor to the next tab stop. History The word ''tab'' derives from the word ''tabulate'', which means "to arrange data in a tabular, or table, fo ...

causes the carriage to go to the next tab stop. In text editors on a computer, the same concept is implemented simplistically with automatic, fixed tab stops. Modern word processors generalize this concept by offering tab stops that have an alignment attribute and cause the text to be automatically aligned at left, at right or center of the tab stop itself. Such tab stops are paragraph-specific properties and can be moved to a different location in any moment, or even removed. Sometimes, placeholders in

code snippets Snippet is a programming term for a small region of re-usable source code, machine code, or text. Ordinarily, these are formally defined operative units to incorporate into larger programming modules. Snippet management is a feature of some text ...

are also called "tab stops" because the user can cycle through them by pressing the tab key.

Types of tab stops

A tab stop is a horizontal position which is set for placing and aligning text on a page. There are at least five kinds of tab stops in general usage in word processing or in Microsoft Word. ;Left: text extends to the right from the tab stop. ;Center: text is centered at the tab stop. ;Right: text extends to the left from the tab stop until the tab's space is filled, and then the text extends to the right. ;Decimal: text before the decimal point extends to the left, and text after the decimal point extends to the right. ;Bar: a vertical line at the specified position on each line in a document.

Dynamic tab stops

In contrast to fixed positioning, tab stops can be adjusted dynamically, based on the length of adjacent tab-delimited line segments, by alignment to a specific character or string in each line, etc.

Adobe InDesign Adobe InDesign is a desktop publishing and page layout designing software application produced by Adobe Inc. and first released in 1999. It can be used to create works such as posters, flyers, brochures, magazines, newspapers, presentations, ...

supports a non-printing " indent to here" character. In 2007, Nick Gravgaard published an algorithm for automatic dynamic tab stops called "Elastic tabstops".Elastic tabstops
/ref> This can be useful for viewing/editing source code and essential for tabular data.
/ref> Various text editors and IDEs have implemented the elastic tabstops algorithm either directly or by extension.

Software which supports elastic tabstops

* Visual StudioAlways Aligned
Always Aligned repository
/ref> * AtomElastic Tabstops package for Atom
/ref> *

Textadept Textadept is a free software minimalism (computing), minimalist text editor designed for computer programming. Distributed under the MIT license, MIT license, it is written in C (programming language), C and Lua (programming language), Lua and is ...

Elastic Tabstops for Textadept
/ref> *

Code Browser A code browser is an editor, sometimes with folding or other advanced layout capabilities, designed to structure source code or, by extension, other kinds of text file. Since it is typically aware of the syntax (and, to some extent, the semantics ...

* JEditJEdit - Elastic Tabstops
/ref> *

Notepad++ Notepad++ is a text and source code editor for use with Microsoft Windows. It supports tabbed editing, which allows working with multiple open files in a single window. The product's name comes from the C postfix increment operator. Notepad++ ...

Elastic Tabstops plugin for Notepad++
/ref> * Go tabwriter package Go (programming language)br>tabwriter package
/ref> * Rust tabwriter crateElastic tabstops for Rust
/ref>

References

Typewriters Typography User interface techniques {{Typ-stub

Types of tab stops

Dynamic tab stops

Software which supports elastic tabstops

See also

References