Draw Invisible Characters

[thecoolwinter]

Description

Adds a configuration option to draw invisible characters.

By default, draws spaces as a small dot, with emphasis on spaces that align with the user's selected indent width. Draws tabs as a small arrow. Draws line endings (carriage returns and line feeds) as a ¬ character.

Replacement characters are configurable using the config object.

Adds a configuration option to warn users about potentially dangerous/unnecessary characters that may not be visible to the naked eye. This could be used to warn about something like a zero-width space being accidentally copied into a file.

Detailed changes

• Adds a new InvisibleCharactersConfig type that contains toggles for certain whitespace characters, as well as a set of 'warning' characters to draw warning boxes on.
• Adds a new InvisibleCharactersCoordinator that tells the text view how to draw characters depending on the current configuration.
• Adds a new invisibleCharacterConfig option to CodeEditSourceEditor and TextViewController.
• Adds a new warningCharacters option to CodeEditSourceEditor and TextViewController.
• Updates TextViewController to correctly update the coordinator when the user's theme, font, or indent option are updated.

Related Issues

• ✨ Render Whitespace Characters CodeEditTextView#22
• ✨ Invisible characters #207

Checklist

• I read and understood the contributing guide as well as the code of conduct
• The issues this PR addresses are related to each other
• My changes generate no new warnings
• My code builds and runs on my machine
• My changes are all related to the related issue above
• I documented my code

Screenshots

Example document with tabs, spaces, newlines, and a zero-width character pasted in before the 1. It responds to theme updates and live editing.

Screen.Recording.2025-06-12.at.1.27.39.PM.mov

[austincondiff]

This comment may necessitate change in this PR to have a warning characters setting separate from the invisible characters.

[thecoolwinter]

This comment may necessitate change in this PR to have a warning characters setting separate from the invisible characters.

@austincondiff That's a good point, lets do both.

[thecoolwinter]

@austincondiff updated to split the warning characters into their own parameter and documentation.