Some Eclipse Foundation services are deprecated, or will be soon. Please ensure you've read this important communication.

Bug 37469

Summary: [preferences] Setting 'use spaces for tabs' in Java IDE should be one option setting not four different settings
Product: [Eclipse Project] JDT Reporter: sam_bravard
Component: TextAssignee: JDT-Text-Inbox <jdt-text-inbox>
Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE QA Contact:
Severity: enhancement    
Priority: P3    
Version: 2.1   
Target Milestone: ---   
Hardware: PC   
OS: Windows XP   
Whiteboard:

Description sam_bravard CLA 2003-05-10 16:36:31 EDT 
Converting tabs to spaces is a very common setting for most programming teams 
(it eliminates any ambiguity about how many spaces a tab should be on what 
platform).

To achieve tab expansion under eclipse is rediculously difficult compared to 
other IDEs.  In Eclipse to set 'insert 4 spaces for each tab key pressed and 
leave real tabs (CTRLI) at 8 spaces' requires the following settings:

Java->Editor->Appearance->Tab Width = 8
Java->Editor->Typing->Insert Spaces for Tabs = on
Java->CodeFormatter->Style->Number of spaces representing an indentation level 
= 4
Java->CodeFormatter->Style->Insert tabs for indentation not spaces = off

It would be nice if there were just two global options 'Tab Size' (Number) 
and 'Insert Spaces instead of Tabs' (on/off) and were respected by the code 
formatter as well as other editors.
Comment 1 Olivier Thomann CLA 2003-05-12 11:01:07 EDT 
Move to JDT/UI since this is related to changes in the preferences pages.
Comment 2 Dani Megert CLA 2004-01-12 11:19:51 EST 

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 19036 ***