EmacsWiki: White Space

This page describes package Lisp:whitespace.el, by ViniciusJoseLatorre.

: .:: v13.2.2 :: part of GNU Emacs ::.
: It runs on Emacs 24.
: Note 1: The source here in EmacsWiki was modified to run on Emacs 21, 22, 23 and 24.
: Note 2: This package replaces BlankMode.

Screenshot

The screenshots below show when WhiteSpace is turned on using the default setting.

Light background

Dark background

About whitespace

This package is a minor mode to visualize blanks (TAB, (HARD) SPACE and NEWLINE).

WhiteSpace uses two ways to visualize blanks: Faces and display table.

Faces are used to highlight the background with a color. WhiteSpace uses font-lock to highlight blank characters, see FontLockMode.
Display table changes the way a character is displayed, that is, it provides a visual mark for characters, for example, at the end of line (?\xB6), at SPACEs (?\xB7) and at TABs (?\xBB).

The ‘whitespace-style’ variable selects which way blanks are visualized.

Note that when WhiteSpace is turned on, WhiteSpace saves the font-lock state, that is, if font-lock is on or off. And WhiteSpace restores the font-lock state when it is turned off. So, if WhiteSpace is turned on and font-lock is off, WhiteSpace also turns on the font-lock to highlight blanks, but the font-lock will be turned off when WhiteSpace is turned off. Thus, turn on font-lock before WhiteSpace is on, if you want that font-lock continues on after WhiteSpace is turned off.

When WhiteSpace is on, it takes care of highlighting some special characters over the default mechanism of ‘nobreak-char-display’ (which see) and ‘show-trailing-whitespace’ (which see).

The trailing spaces are not highlighted while point is at end of line. Also the spaces at beginning of buffer are not highlighted while point is at beginning of buffer; and the spaces at end of buffer are not highlighted while point is at end of buffer.

There are two ways of using WhiteSpace: local and global.

Local WhiteSpace affects only the current buffer.
Global WhiteSpace affects all current and future buffers. That is, if you turn on global WhiteSpace and then create a new buffer, the new buffer will also have WhiteSpace on. The ‘whitespace-global-modes’ variable controls which major-mode will be automagically turned on.

You can mix the local and global usage without any conflict. But local WhiteSpace has priority over global WhiteSpace. WhiteSpace is active in a buffer if you have enabled it in that buffer or if you have enabled it globally.

When global and local WhiteSpace are on:

if local WhiteSpace is turned off, WhiteSpace is turned off for the current buffer only.
if global WhiteSpace is turned off, WhiteSpace continues on only in the buffers in which local WhiteSpace is on.

To use WhiteSpace, insert in your ~/.emacs:

   (require 'whitespace)

Or autoload at least one of the commands‘whitespace-mode’, ‘whitespace-toggle-options’, ‘global-whitespace-mode’ or ‘global-whitespace-toggle-options’. For example:

   (autoload 'whitespace-mode           "whitespace" "Toggle whitespace visualization."        t)
   (autoload 'whitespace-toggle-options "whitespace" "Toggle local `whitespace-mode' options." t)

WhiteSpace was inspired by:

whitespace.el – Rajesh Vaidheeswarran <rv@gnu.org>

: Warn about and clean bogus whitespaces in the file
: (inspired the idea to warn and clean some blanks)
: This was the original whitespace.el which was replaced by blank-mode.el (BlankMode). And later blank-mode.el was renamed to whitespace.el.

show-whitespace-mode.el – Aurélien Tisné <aurelien.tisne@free.fr>

: Simple mode to highlight whitespaces
: (inspired the idea to use font-lock)

whitespace-mode.el – LawrenceMitchell

: Major mode for editing Whitespace
: (inspired the idea to use display table)

visws.el – MilesBader

: Make whitespace visible
: (handle display table, his code was modified, but the main idea was kept)

For good performance, be sure to byte-compile WhiteSpace, e.g.

   M-x byte-compile-file <give the path to whitespace.el when prompted>

This will generate whitespace.elc, which will be loaded instead of Lisp:whitespace.el.

WhiteSpace was tested with GNU Emacs 22 and 23.

Using whitespace

There is no problem if you mix local and global minor mode usage.

LOCAL WhiteSpace:

To toggle WhiteSpace options locally, type:

: M-x whitespace-toggle-options RET

To activate WhiteSpace locally, type:

: C-u 1 M-x whitespace-mode RET

To deactivate WhiteSpace locally, type:

: C-u 0 M-x whitespace-mode RET

To toggle WhiteSpace locally, type:

: M-x whitespace-mode RET

GLOBAL WhiteSpace:

To toggle WhiteSpace options globally, type:

: M-x global-whitespace-toggle-options RET

To activate WhiteSpace globally, type:

: C-u 1 M-x global-whitespace-mode RET

To deactivate WhiteSpace globally, type:

: C-u 0 M-x global-whitespace-mode RET

To toggle WhiteSpace globally, type:

: M-x global-whitespace-mode RET

You can also bind ‘whitespace-mode’, ‘global-whitespace-mode’, ‘whitespace-toggle-options’ and ‘global-whitespace-toggle-options’ to some key, like:

   (global-set-key "\C-c_w" 'whitespace-mode)
   (global-set-key "\C-c_t" 'whitespace-toggle-options)
   (global-set-key "\C-c=w" 'global-whitespace-mode)
   (global-set-key "\C-c=t" 'global-whitespace-toggle-options)

There are also the following useful commands:

‘whitespace-newline-mode’: Toggle NEWLINE minor mode visualization ("nl" on modeline).
‘global-whitespace-newline-mode’: Toggle NEWLINE global minor mode visualization ("NL" on modeline).
‘whitespace-report’: Report some blank problems in buffer.
‘whitespace-report-region’: Report some blank problems in a region.
‘whitespace-cleanup’: Clean up some blank problems in all buffer or at region.
‘whitespace-cleanup-region’: Clean up some blank problems at region.

The problems, which are cleaned up, are:

1. empty lines at beginning of buffer.

2. empty lines at end of buffer.

: If ‘whitespace-style’ includes the value ‘empty’, remove all empty lines at beginning and/or end of buffer.

3. 8 or more SPACEs at beginning of line.

: If ‘whitespace-style’ includes the value ‘indentation’: replace 8 or more SPACEs at beginning of line by TABs, if ‘indent-tabs-mode’ is non-nil; otherwise, replace TABs by SPACEs.
: If ‘whitespace-style’ includes the value `indentation::tab’, replace 8 or more SPACEs at beginning of line by TABs.
: If ‘whitespace-style’ includes the value `indentation::space’, replace TABs by SPACEs.

4. SPACEs before TAB.

: If ‘whitespace-style’ includes the value ‘space-before-tab’: replace SPACEs by TABs, if ‘indent-tabs-mode’ is non-nil; otherwise, replace TABs by SPACEs.
: If ‘whitespace-style’ includes the value `space-before-tab::tab’, replace SPACEs by TABs.
: If ‘whitespace-style’ includes the value `space-before-tab::space’, replace TABs by SPACEs.

5. SPACEs or TABs at end of line.

: If ‘whitespace-style’ includes the value ‘trailing’, remove all SPACEs or TABs at end of line.”

6. 8 or more SPACEs after TAB.

: If ‘whitespace-style’ includes the value ‘space-after-tab’: replace SPACEs by TABs, if ‘indent-tabs-mode’ is non-nil; otherwise, replace TABs by SPACEs.
: If ‘whitespace-style’ includes the value `space-after-tab::tab’, replace SPACEs by TABs.
: If ‘whitespace-style’ includes the value `space-after-tab::space’, replace TABs by SPACEs.

Hooks

WhiteSpace has the following hook variables:

‘whitespace-mode-hook’: It is evaluated always when WhiteSpace is turned on.
‘global-whitespace-mode-hook’: It is evaluated always when WhiteSpace is turned on globally.
‘whitespace-load-hook’: It is evaluated after WhiteSpace package is loaded.

Options

Below it’s shown a brief description of WhiteSpace options, please, see the options declaration in the code for a long documentation.

‘whitespace-style’: Specify which kind of blank is visualized.
‘whitespace-space’: Face used to visualize SPACE.
‘whitespace-hspace’: Face used to visualize HARD SPACE.
‘whitespace-tab’: Face used to visualize TAB.
‘whitespace-newline’: Face used to visualize NEWLINE char mapping.
‘whitespace-trailing’: Face used to visualize trailing blanks.
‘whitespace-line’: Face used to visualize “long” lines.
‘whitespace-space-before-tab’: Face used to visualize SPACEs before TAB.
‘whitespace-indentation’: Face used to visualize 8 or more SPACEs at beginning of line.
‘whitespace-empty’: Face used to visualize empty lines at beginning and/or end of buffer.
‘whitespace-space-after-tab’: Face used to visualize 8 or more SPACEs after TAB.
‘whitespace-space-regexp’: Specify SPACE characters regexp.
‘whitespace-hspace-regexp’: Specify HARD SPACE characters regexp.
‘whitespace-tab-regexp’: Specify TAB characters regexp.
‘whitespace-trailing-regexp’: Specify trailing characters regexp.
‘whitespace-space-before-tab-regexp’: Specify SPACEs before TAB regexp.
‘whitespace-indentation-regexp’: Specify regexp for 8 or more SPACEs at beginning of line.
‘whitespace-empty-at-bob-regexp’: Specify regexp for empty lines at beginning of buffer.
‘whitespace-empty-at-eob-regexp’: Specify regexp for empty lines at end of buffer.
‘whitespace-space-after-tab-regexp’: Specify regexp for 8 or more SPACEs after TAB.
‘whitespace-line-column’: Specify column beyond which the line is highlighted.
‘whitespace-display-mappings’: Specify an alist of mappings for displaying characters.
‘whitespace-global-modes’: Modes for which global WhiteSpace is automagically turned on.
‘whitespace-action’: Specify which action is taken when a buffer is visited or written.

To set the above options you may:

a. insert the code in your ~/.emacs, like:

   (setq whitespace-space 'underline)

This way always keep your default settings when you enter a new Emacs session.

b. or use ‘set-variable’ in your Emacs session, like:

   M-x set-variable RET whitespace-space RET underline RET

This way keep your settings only during the current Emacs session.

c. or use customization, for example:

In Emacs 21 or lower:

click on MenuBar Help option,
then click on Customize,
then click on Browse Customization Groups,
expand Data group,
expand Whitespace group
and then customize WhiteSpace options.

In Emacs 22 or higher:

click on MenuBar Options option,
then click on Customize Emacs,
then click on Browse Customization Groups,
expand Data group,
expand Whitespace group
and then customize WhiteSpace options.

Through this way, you may choose if the settings are kept or not when you leave out the current Emacs session.

d. or see the option value:

   C-h v whitespace-space RET

and click the customize hypertext button.

Through this way, you may choose if the settings are kept or not when you leave out the current Emacs session.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to DavidReitter for suggesting a ‘whitespace-newline’ initialization with low contrast relative to the background color.

Thanks to Stephen Deasey <sdeasey@gmail.com> for the ‘indent-tabs-mode’ usage suggestion.

Thanks to Eric Cooper <ecc@cmu.edu> for the suggestion to have hook actions when buffer is written as the original whitespace package had.

Thanks to nschum for the idea about highlight “long” lines tail. See EightyColumnRule.

Thanks to JuriLinkov for suggesting:

‘define-minor-mode’.
‘global-whitespace-*’ name for global commands.

Thanks to Robert J. Chassell <bob@gnu.org> for doc fix and testing.

Thanks to DrewAdams for toggle commands suggestion.

Thanks to Antti Kaihola <antti.kaihola@linux-aktivaattori.org> for helping to fix ‘find-file-hooks’ reference.

Thanks to Andreas Roehler <andreas.roehler@easy-emacs.de> for indicating defface byte-compilation warnings.

Thanks to TimOCallaghan for the idea about highlight “long” lines. See EightyColumnRule.

Thanks to Yanghui Bian <yanghuibian@gmail.com> for indicating a new NEWLINE character mapping.

Thanks to Pete Forman <pete.forman@westgeo.com> for indicating whitespace-mode.el on XEmacs.

Thanks to:

: Rajesh Vaidheeswarran <rv@gnu.org> – whitespace.el
: Aurélien Tisné <aurelien.tisne@free.fr> – show-whitespace-mode.el (ShowWhitespaceMode)
: LawrenceMitchell – whitespace-mode.el (WhitespaceMode)
: MilesBader – visws.el (Emacs 21)

And to all people who contributed with them.

Kind of Blanks

The ‘whitespace-style’ variable specifies which way blanks are visualized.

It’s a list containing some or all of the following values:

face: enable all visualization via faces (see below).
trailing: trailing blanks are visualized via faces.
: It has effect only if ‘face’ (see above) is present in ‘whitespace-style’.
tabs: TABs are visualized via faces.
: It has effect only if ‘face’ (see above) is present in ‘whitespace-style’.
spaces: SPACEs and HARD SPACEs are visualized via faces.
: It has effect only if ‘face’ (see above) is present in ‘whitespace-style’.
lines: lines whose have columns beyond ‘whitespace-line-column’ are highlighted via faces.
: Whole line is highlighted.
: It has precedence over ‘lines-tail’ (see below).
: It has effect only if ‘face’ (see above) is present in ‘whitespace-style’.
lines-tail: lines whose have columns beyond ‘whitespace-line-column’ are highlighted via faces.
: But only the part of line which goes beyond ‘whitespace-line-column’ column.
: It has effect only if ‘lines’ (see above) is not present in ‘whitespace-style’ and if ‘face’ (see above) is present in ‘whitespace-style’.
newline: NEWLINEs are visualized via faces.
: It has effect only if ‘face’ (see above) is present in ‘whitespace-style’.
empty: empty lines at beginning and/or end of buffer are visualized via faces.
: It has effect only if ‘face’ (see above) is present in ‘whitespace-style’.
indentation::tab: 8 or more SPACEs at beginning of line are visualized via faces.
: It has effect only if ‘face’ (see above) is present in ‘whitespace-style’.
indentation::space: TABs at beginning of line are visualized via faces.
: It has effect only if ‘face’ (see above) is present in ‘whitespace-style’.
indentation: 8 or more SPACEs at beginning of line are visualized, if ‘indent-tabs-mode’ (which see) is non-nil; otherwise, TABs at beginning of line are visualized via faces.
: It has effect only if ‘face’ (see above) is present in ‘whitespace-style’.
space-after-tab::tab: 8 or more SPACEs after a TAB are visualized via faces.
: It has effect only if ‘face’ (see above) is present in ‘whitespace-style’.
space-after-tab::space: TABs are visualized when occurs 8 or more SPACEs after a TAB via faces.
: It has effect only if ‘face’ (see above) is present in ‘whitespace-style’.
space-after-tab: 8 or more SPACEs after a TAB are visualized, if ‘indent-tabs-mode’ (which see) is non-nil; otherwise, the TABs are visualized via faces.
: It has effect only if ‘face’ (see above) is present in ‘whitespace-style’.
space-before-tab::tab: SPACEs before TAB are visualized via faces.
: It has effect only if ‘face’ (see above) is present in ‘whitespace-style’.
space-before-tab::space: TABs are visualized when occurs SPACEs before TAB via faces.
: It has effect only if ‘face’ (see above) is present in ‘whitespace-style’.
space-before-tab: SPACEs before TAB are visualized, if ‘indent-tabs-mode’ (which see) is non-nil; otherwise, the TABs are visualized via faces.
: It has effect only if ‘face’ (see above) is present in ‘whitespace-style’.
space-mark: SPACEs and HARD SPACEs are visualized via display table.
tab-mark: TABs are visualized via display table.
newline-mark: NEWLINEs are visualized via display table.

Any other value is ignored.

If nil, don’t visualize TABs, (HARD) SPACEs and NEWLINEs.

There is an evaluation order for some values, if some values are included in ‘whitespace-style’ list. For example, if indentation, indentation::tab and/or indentation::space are included in ‘whitespace-style’ list. The evaluation order for these values is:

For indentation:

indentation
indentation::tab
indentation::space

For SPACEs after TABs:

space-after-tab
space-after-tab::tab
space-after-tab::space

For SPACEs before TABs:

space-before-tab
space-before-tab::tab
space-before-tab::space

So, for example, if indentation and indentation::space are included in ‘whitespace-style’ list, the indentation value is evaluated instead of indentation::space value.

One reason for not visualize spaces via faces (if ‘face’ is not included in ‘whitespace-style’) is to use exclusively for cleanning up a buffer.

Actions

The variable ‘whitespace-action’ specifies which action is taken when a buffer is visited or written.

It’s a list containing some or all of the following values:

nil: no action is taken.
cleanup: clean up any bogus WhiteSpace always when local WhiteSpace is turned on.
: See ‘whitespace-cleanup’ and ‘whitespace-cleanup-region’.
report-on-bogus: report if there is any bogus WhiteSpace always when local WhiteSpace is turned on.
auto-cleanup: clean up any bogus WhiteSpace when buffer is written.
: See ‘whitespace-cleanup’ and ‘whitespace-cleanup-region’.
abort-on-bogus: abort if there is any bogus WhiteSpace and the buffer is written.
warn-read-only: give a warning if ‘cleanup’ or ‘auto-cleanup’ is included in ‘whitespace-action’ and the buffer is read-only.

Any other value is treated as nil.

TAB & Display Table

When WhiteSpace is on and a TAB occupies exactly one column, it will display the character ?\xBB at that column followed by a TAB which goes to the next TAB column. This is due the way the Emacs display engine works.

The situation above is illustrated by the following images:

There are the following possibilities to deal with the situation above:

Insert in your ~/.emacs file:

        (setq whitespace-display-mappings
          '((space-mark   ?\    [?\xB7]     [?.])	; space
            (space-mark   ?\xA0 [?\xA4]     [?_])	; hard space
            (newline-mark ?\n   [?\xB6 ?\n] [?$ ?\n])	; end-of-line
            ))

: The setting above doesn’t have any TAB display table mapping.

Comment the TAB display table mapping line in the whitespace.el file:

        (defcustom whitespace-display-mappings
          '((space-mark   ?\    [?\xB7]     [?.])	; space
            (space-mark   ?\xA0 [?\xA4]     [?_])	; hard space
            (newline-mark ?\n   [?\xB6 ?\n] [?$ ?\n])	; end-of-line
            ;; WARNING: the mapping below has a problem.
            ;; When a TAB occupies exactly one column, it will display the character
            ;; ?\xBB at that column followed by a TAB which goes to the next TAB
            ;; column.
            ;; If this is a problem for you, please, comment the line below.
            ;;(tab-mark   ?\t   [?\xBB ?\t] [?\\ ?\t])	; tab
            )
            ......

Eliminate the tab-mark value from whitespace-style variable, that is, don’t use TAB display table mapping.
Just live with it. ;)

Inbox

Please, put here your comments, suggestions, doubts, improvements, etc.

indentation::space - bug or am I a newbie?

I have indentation::space in my whitespace-style, and expected it would cause leading TAB characters to be highlighted, but it seems to highlight 8 or more leading spaces. I thought that would only be done by indentation::tabs ??? Other style settings seem to work as I expected from the documentation.

  -------------------------------------------------------------------
  Fri, 15 Feb 2008 08:26:15 +0100

Hi,

    whitespace doesn't work with emacs-22.1.90, the pretest version,
    because the c function characterp is only part of the cvs trunk.

    Cheers

    Martin
    --
    parozusa at web dot de

  -------------------------------------------------------------------

Indeed, it only runs on Emacs 23. I’ve just changed the EmacsWiki pages.

Thanks. – ViniciusJoseLatorre

: ————
: Also I modified the WhiteSpace source here in EmacsWiki to run in Emacs 21, 22 and 23.
: – ViniciusJoseLatorre

    Hi. I really like this new and improved Blankmode.  But there are a couple 
    things to clarify:
        1) How do I completely disable the use of tab characters, and 
           use 4 spaces instead?
        2) How do I turn off a single option? For example, how can I 
           disable the 'newline' representation only?

    Finally, as well as asking questions, I have one suggestion for the 
    80-column rule. Try drawing a box around the chars on a line > 79 
    chars in length. IMHO, that makes the problem more obvious than 
    highlighting the whole line. Example:

          (setq my-long-line-face (make-face 'my-long-line-face))
          (set-face-foreground 'my-long-line-face "red")
          (set-face-background 'my-long-line-face "grey3")
          (set-face-attribute 'my-long-line-face nil :box"green")

    then for usage:

          (defun c-mode-add-keywords (mode)
            (font-lock-add-keywords
             mode
             '(("\t+" (0 'my-tab-face append))
               ("^.\\{79\\}\\(.+\\)$" (1 'my-long-line-face append)))))
     
     Thanks,
     -Tennis

: Well, answering the questions:

I’m not sure if I understood this question, it seems that tab-width variable should be set to 4.
To turn off a single whitespace option, just eliminate the option from whitespace-style variable. For example, to disable newline visualization, just eliminate the newline symbol from whitespace-style, or call whitespace-toggle-options.

Thanks for your suggestion, but it is already implemented via lines-tail symbol. Please, see whitespace-style documentation.

– ViniciusJoseLatorre

: ————
: Since version 10.0, the ‘indent-tabs-mode’ and ‘tab-width’ settings from user are honored.
: – ViniciusJoseLatorre

Hello, whitespace fail to show newlines on ubuntu with :“GNU Emacs 23.0.60.1 (i486-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 2.12.0) of 2008-03-07 on iridium, modified by Debian”. All the content of my files is diplayed on one line until i turn off newline with the “n” option. It work fine on my other machine (gentoo) with same files and emacs 23.0.60.1 also. Some thing is missing (not in whitespace) but i can’t figure what. Any idea ? Thank you.

: Hi Thierry, as we could see by email, this was an Emacs problem instead of a WhiteSpace problem. Thanks for your report.
: – ViniciusJoseLatorre

I have been successfully using (fromerly blank-mode.el and now) whitespace.el for a while now on Windows-based GNU Emacs, including 22.3. I appreciate it very much. Thank you!

I just tried using whitespace.el on x86-64 Fedora 9-based GNU Emacs 22.3 & 22.2. All space and tab characters are displayed as a rectangle, which is apparently one tab-width without regard to where the next tab-stop would naturally occur. The perimeter of each rectangle is the foreground color, surrounding the core of the rectangle/tab-width which is the background color. AFAIK, I have it installed and configured and loaded-via-.emacs the same way as I have successfully used on my Windows-based GNU Emacs 22.3. The main installation act that I use is brute force: I replace the entirety of the Rajesh Vaidheeswarran whitespace.el in /usr/local/share/emacs/22.3/lisp that was provided with GNU Emacs with yours and byte-compile to whitespace.elc. (I am having a different problem with blank-mode.el that I have described over on that wikipage.) – Dan’l Miller

: Hi Dan,
: Emacs displays rectangle when it can’t display a character glyph.
: Please, insert the following setting into ~/.emacs file for Fedora environment:

         (setq whitespace-display-mappings '((space-mark ?\  [?.]) (newline-mark ?\n [?$ ?\n]) (tab-mark ?\t [?\\ ?\t])))

: So, SPACE will be displayed as '.' and TAB as '\'.
: – ViniciusJoseLatorre

Hello, I am trying to use whitespace-mode under Mac OS X 10.5.6. I am getting the following horrible display while using Carbon Emacs(22.3.1) or Aquamacs(22.3.1):

However, it works well under Emacs.app (23). Therefore, the modification to make it works under Emacs 21 and 22 seem to have some problem which I don’t know how to solve. Regards. – Gustavo Delfino

I’m having the same display issue with whitespace-mode under Mac OS X 10.5.6 using Carbon Emacs. Anyone know how to fix it? – Eddie

Hi Gustavo, Hi Eddie,

This problem under Mac OS X is similar to the Dan above under Fedora, but instead of a rectangle it displays a diamond with an interrogation mark inside.

Please, try the same setting above.

Thanks – ViniciusJoseLatorre

————

Thanks Vinicius, that fixed it! – Eddie

: ————
: Cool! – ViniciusJoseLatorre

Display of centered dot, etc. did not work on my Unicode terminal until I replaced all glyphs in whitespace-display-mappings with their Unicode equivalents: e.g. [?\xB7] becomes [?\u00B7]. Otherwise it tried to send a literal #\xB7 to the terminal, which resulted in a rectangle. – JimUrsetto

: Hi JimUsetto,
: I’ve just tested your suggestion, it seems ok, see it:

         (setq whitespace-display-mappings '((space-mark ?\  [?\u00B7]) (newline-mark ?\n [?$ ?\n]) (tab-mark ?\t [?\u00BB ?\t])))

: Probably, the setting above should work on Fedora and Mac OS X.
: If someone test in those environments, please, write here the results.
: Thanks – ViniciusJoseLatorre

Hi Vinicius,

I tested these settings no Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.6 and they seem ok.

: Thanks for testing – ViniciusJoseLatorre

I am using GNU Emacs 23.1.1 and I have the following setting for whitespace-mode.

;; Whitespace mode.
(require 'whitespace)
(setq whitespace-style
  '(empty lines-tail tabs tab-mark trailing))

I have issues with the ‘empty’ marker. When am I writing a new source code, whitespace mode marks the ‘empty’ line with yellow background face as I press have an empty line after the last line. That is fine. However, when I start typing the first non-empty line after the prvious empty line, I expect the mark to go away. But, it doesn’t and it stays forever until I go to the beginning of the buffer and edit something. This is a big distraction for me. I am not sure if this is a whitespace mode issue, or I am doing something wrong. Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

– PraveenKumar

: Hi PraveenKumar,
: This problem should be fixed by version 13.0. – ViniciusJoseLatorre

: Hi, ViniciusJoseLatorre!
: I downloaded and tried 13.2 and I don’t see the above mentioned issue anymore. Thanks for fixing it.
: – PraveenKumar

I am making Whitespace mode honor the setting for fill-column with:

  (add-hook 'whitespace-mode-hook
            (lambda () (set (make-local-variable 'whitespace-line-column)
                            fill-column)))

I don’t think there is a solution to this on a local, per-buffer basis with ‘global-whitespace-mode’.

Hi,

Indeed, this problem is not addressed by WhiteSpace at moment. I’ll try to fix it.

Thanks for reporting. – ViniciusJoseLatorre

: ————
: Hi,
: Version 13.1 address this problem now, please, see ‘whitespace-line-column’ documentation.
: – ViniciusJoseLatorre

In GNU Emacs 23.2.1, cursor movement in c++-mode with whitespace-mode is sloppy. When I keep pressing the arrow keys, or C-f/C-b; C-p/C-n, the cursor doesn’t move smoothly. It just jumps discretely. However, when I turn off the whitespace-mode, the cursor movement is smooth again. Does anyone else face this issue?

– PraveenKumar

I also experience the problem that cursor movement becomes very unresponsive in cc-mode or LaTeX-mode (auctex) in combination with whitespace-mode. This is so serious that it prevents me from turning whitespace-mode on permanently. After changing to fundamental-mode the cursor becomes responsive again in the same buffer, even though whitespace-mode is still active. I experience this problem with whitespace.el 12.1 in both emacs 23.1 and 23.2. Any ideas?

– Christoph

The slowdown in 12.1 seems to come from the new whitespace-post-command-hook function, which looks like it triggers refontification when moving around in a buffer. I’ve temporarily overriden the hook by throwing

    (defun whitespace-post-command-hook() nil)

into my .emacs.

– Jeremy

: Hi PraveenKumar,
: Hi Christoph,
: Hi Jeremy,
: Well, version 13.0 should fix the slow down cursor movement.
: Thanks for reporting. – ViniciusJoseLatorre

I’m using global-whitespace-mode on emacs 23.2.1 but it seems to only work when I open files. If I create a new buffer, or manually change my highlighting mode, whitespace mode no longer has any effect. I need to disable it and re-enable it for it to work. I’m also using LineNumbers, and whitespace mode affects the spaces next to the numbers. Is there a way I could disable that?

Hi,

It works fine when opening files which has major mode declared in whitespace-global-modes variable. For example, if a C++ buffer is opened (C-x C-f test.cpp RET) the global WhiteSpace highlighting works. NOTE: the buffer test.cpp in the previous example does not have a file associated.

Well, I don’t know LineNumbers packages but if the LineNumbers packages insert strings at beginning of each line, I see no trivial way to avoid the extra spaces highlighting. Now, if LineNumbers packages insert text properties at beginning of each line or create a parallel buffer then probably there is a good solution.

Could you, please, send me an email with the steps necessary to reproduce this problem starting with emacs -Q?

Send me also which LineNumbers package and the environment setting for this package you are using.

Thanks for your report. – ViniciusJoseLatorre

————

Hi,

I’ve just seen LineNumbers page (linum.el file). One possible solution for the blank visualization next to the numbers could be to use one of the following settings:

1. right justified: (setq linum-format (format "%%05d%c" ?\x200B))

2. left justified: (setq linum-format (format "%%d%c" ?\x200B))

The character ?\x200B is a zero width space which is not highlighted by WhiteSpace.

Another solution could be to change LineNumbers packages to not use spaces to separate the line number from the line, but use the width text property.

– ViniciusJoseLatorre

: ————
: Here’s some code I came up with. It uses Unicode x2007 FIGURE SPACE, a space that always has the same width as a digit. It also supports dynamic width.

                (add-hook 'linum-before-numbering-hook
                          (lambda ()
                            (let ((w (length (number-to-string (count-lines (point-min) (point-max))))))
                              (setq linum-format
                                    `(lambda (line)
                                       (propertize (concat
                                                    (truncate-string-to-width
                                                     "" (- ,w (length (number-to-string line)))
                                                     nil ?\x2007)
                                                    (number-to-string line))
                                                   'face 'linum))))))

– StefanThomas

: ————
: Hi StefanThomas,
: Yes, the code above seems to solve this problem.
: Thanks for the code. – ViniciusJoseLatorre

I have a file containing zero width space characters (unicode code point U+200B). Any idea how I can get a visual feedback where they are? I tried to customize whitespace-display-mappings of whitespace.el like this:

(defcustom whitespace-display-mappings ‘( (space-mark ?\x200B [?\xB7] [?.]) …

But I still don’t see it. Normal spaces are displayed as intented by whitespace.el.

– Flo

: Hi Flo,
: Ok, it seems you modified the whitespace.el source file. So, you should terminate the current Emacs session (C-x C-c), start a new Emacs session, open the modified whitespace.el source file, evaluate the buffer (M-x eval-buffer RET), open the file which contains ?\x200B characters or insert these characters in a file, and, finally, turn on WhiteSpace (M-x whitespace-mode RET). The ?\x200B characters should be marked.
: Now, if you are only testing, use setq instead of defcustom, reevaluate the region containing setq (M-x eval-region RET), go to the file containing ?\x200B characters, turn off WhiteSpace (because it is using the old whitespace-display-mappings value), and turn on WhiteSpace (now use the new whitespace-display-mappings value).
: – ViniciusJoseLatorre

Hi! I have what I think is a bug with whitespace-newline-mode in Emacs 24. When I start it with -Q and then do M-x whitespace-newline-mode twice, it does not get disabled. I discovered this because I tried to duplicate the source of whitespace-newline-mode to make a whitespace-longline-mode mode, and originally thought it was my own bug. It appears it isn’t. – Sarah

Yup, looks like a bug. Please file a report: ‘M-x report-emacs-bug’. – DrewAdams

: Hi Sarah,
: Hi Drew,
: This bug is fixed in version 13.2.2.
: Thanks for report. – ViniciusJoseLatorre

If you also use Desktop.el to save and restore your sessions, then a word of warning about using global-whitespace-mode: Because the enabled modes for each buffer are saved in the desktop file and those modes are re-enabled at restore time, global-whitespace-mode is evaluated for each buffer which is restored; and because running global-whitespace-mode is an expensive operation which processes every current buffer, this becomes an o(n^2) operation over the course of the desktop restore, and absolutely kills the performance for large sessions.

whitespace.el should probably provide some custom support for the desktop library. See the help for the desktop-minor-mode-handlers variable, and the commentary in desktop.el.

One option would be to enable whitespace-mode for each buffer instead of global-whitespace-mode. Another would be to just register that global-whitespace-mode was enabled, and use desktop-after-read-hook to enable it once only. I would think the latter is probably the preferable approach.

CategoryCode, CategoryModes, CategoryFaces, ProgrammingModes