quarto-dev / quarto-dev/quarto

VS Code Extension: Don't turn off highlighting of "invisible characters"

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bug
Dominant language
TypeScript
Stars
645
Forks
62
Avg merge
17h 42m
Merged PRs (30d)
13

Description

Bug description

In the VS Code Extension, for some unknown reason the extension ships with

      "[quarto]": {
        "editor.unicodeHighlight.ambiguousCharacters": false,
        "editor.unicodeHighlight.invisibleCharacters": false
      },

https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto/blob/faef822a085df65809adf55fb77c273e9cdb87b9/apps/vscode/package.json#L958

I git blamed my way back but they seem to be tied to the "great migration" commit which is not useful for gaining context about why this is set
https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto/commit/0afac7beaf0924099519235eec51102155599270

I believe that "editor.unicodeHighlight.invisibleCharacters": false is particularly harmful, as it prevents non-breaking spaces from being highlighted. I'd argue that if non-breaking spaces were highlighted, then this user would have been able to figure out their problem much faster:
https://github.com/posit-dev/air/issues/381

Here are the docs for these two settings, I vote we remove the contributed configuration for both of these entirely:

Image Image

This also aligns with my general principle that extensions should ship as minimal amount of contributed configuration as possible, because it will often just confuse users otherwise.

Steps to reproduce

No response

Actual behavior

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Expected behavior

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Your environment

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Contributor guide

No contributing guide indexed for this repository

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Open apps/vscode/package.json and inspect the contributed [quarto] configuration near line 958. Remove the settings for ambiguousCharacters and invisibleCharacters, then verify that the extension no longer overrides VS Code's unicode highlighting defaults.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
typescript, vscode
Domain
devtools
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
1/5
Estimated time
Under an hour
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Clearly specified
Newbie friendliness
50/100

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