Talk:Tab stop

Tab sheets not mentioned
Tab stops literally refer to the indent points the typewriter stops at when typesetting tab sheets. Tab sheets are the things you normally find in your notebook or binder dividing sections. Yes, people typeset them. You get a size of paper usually a 1/2" larger in the dimension you want tabs on, have them printed, then cut off the paper to show the tab you want. For instance, if you have a sheet with 3 tabs and you want 100 copies of each, you print 300 copies of the page you made, then drill off the 2/3 of the page you don't want on the respective stack. Voila, 100 of each tab sheet, ready for pagination and insertion into whatever your clients need.

No HTML pedant
Whereas tabstops are crucial for even low-budget word processors, such a feature is not implemented in HTML at all. The HTML predant to get similar effects is the blind table, a table without borders. Some alignments cannot be made with tables either, at least with current browsers. --Henrik Haftmann (talk) 14:39, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Elastic tabstops
I have never heard of these before, despite being a programmer for decades. The support appears to be limited to just a few tools and, frankly, it sounds like the pet idea of one individual. The size of the section still amounts to half the article. (Not to mention that there is a growing consensus in the software world that characters, including even ordinary tabs, that can cause visual confusion should be avoided.)

I strongly suggest complete deletion or reduction to a brief mention. Failing that, sufficient proof that the concept is not an unimportant fringe phenomenen. 213.196.223.94 (talk) 12:08, 9 July 2016 (UTC)


 * I concur. This reads like the addition of someone's pet project. 88.190.213.13 (talk) 09:01, 5 August 2016 (UTC)


 * Also agree that it is a cute idea but probably not anything in use by more than the inventor. The requirement that you insert a tab after open delimiters to get the contents on the next line to line up, and that lack of a tab on a line will create two disconnected "blocks", both seem like obvious problems with this scheme.Spitzak (talk) 22:01, 1 June 2017 (UTC)


 * The behavior described is fundamentally the same as the "indent to here" functionality which has been supported by Adobe InDesign since 2005 or earlier, so the claims of invention in 2006 seem patently false. I'm revising this section accordingly. —jameslucas ▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄  18:30, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Kindly wake up! Despite being a programmer for decades, elastic tabstops are essential in my work. I require at least one text editor which supports them, to view tabular (tab-separated) data if nothing else! Richard Taytor (talk) 03:42, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Tab stops elsewhere
- ''«Might belong on Tab key but not here. This page is about alignment.»''
 * I propose to clarify it here because tab stops are specifically mentioned in the code editors documentation and shouldn't be confused for alignment/indentation e.g
 * VS Code
 * TextMate
 * About snippets as well.
 * About snippets as well.

AXO NOV (talk) ⚑ 14:30, 1 November 2021 (UTC)


 * I re-added the sentence but changed it to be less confusing: "Sometimes, placeholders in code snippets are also called 'tab stops' because the user can cycle through them by pressing the tab key." —Dexxor (talk) 16:22, 1 November 2021 (UTC)