Show SOME invisible/whitespace characters in Eclipse

eclipse tabs spaces bbedit
bryan kennedy picture bryan kennedy · Dec 12, 2008 · Viewed 131.8k times · Source

A long while back I transitioned to doing all my web application development in Eclipse from BBEdit. But I miss one little feature from BBEdit. I used to be able to show invisible characters like tabs but not show other invisibles like spaces. I know that I can bulk turn all of these on in Eclipse, but I wonder if there is a way to show only some invisibles in Eclipse.

Answer

Aaron Digulla picture Aaron Digulla · Dec 12, 2008

Unfortunately, you can only turn on all invisible (whitespace) characters at the same time. I suggest you file an enhancement request but I doubt they will pick it up.

The text component in Eclipse is very complicated as it is and they are not keen on making them even worse.

[UPDATE] This has been fixed in Eclipse 3.7: Go to Window > Preferences > General > Editors > Text Editors

Click on the link "whitespace characters" to fine tune what should be shown.

Kudos go to John Isaacks

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