Represent white space characters with symbols.

GtkSourceSpaceDrawer provides a way to visualize white spaces, by drawing symbols.

Call gtk_source_view_get_space_drawer() to get the GtkSourceSpaceDrawer instance of a certain GtkSourceView.

By default, no white spaces are drawn because the GtkSourceSpaceDrawer:enable-matrix is FALSE.

To draw white spaces, gtk_source_space_drawer_set_types_for_locations() can be called to set the GtkSourceSpaceDrawer:matrix property (by default all space types are enabled at all locations). Then call gtk_source_space_drawer_set_enable_matrix().

For a finer-grained method, there is also the GtkSourceTag‘s GtkSourceTag:draw-spaces property.

Example

To draw non-breaking spaces everywhere and draw all types of trailing spaces except newlines:

gtk_source_space_drawer_set_types_for_locations (space_drawer,
                                                 GTK_SOURCE_SPACE_LOCATION_ALL,
                                                 GTK_SOURCE_SPACE_TYPE_NBSP);

gtk_source_space_drawer_set_types_for_locations (space_drawer,
                                                 GTK_SOURCE_SPACE_LOCATION_TRAILING,
                                                 GTK_SOURCE_SPACE_TYPE_ALL &
                                                 ~GTK_SOURCE_SPACE_TYPE_NEWLINE);

gtk_source_space_drawer_set_enable_matrix (space_drawer, TRUE);

Use-case: draw unwanted white spaces

A possible use-case is to draw only unwanted white spaces. Examples:

• Draw all trailing spaces.
• If the indentation and alignment must be done with spaces, draw tabs.

And non-breaking spaces can always be drawn, everywhere, to distinguish them from normal spaces.