But that's basically hardcoded tabular data, and should really be solved by an editor with proper tab-stops. Not by abusing the monospaceivity and spaces for alignment.
That’s the crux of the issue for me.
I can think of many ways I’d like to present code in my idealised programming language(s) that would use significantly more advanced layout and typography than today’s typical environments.
However, I wouldn’t actually want to use any of them unless my programming tools all supported them properly. That means the editor, but also the source control and diff tools, the code review and bug tracking systems, and so on.
In the absence of any standard conventions for how to represent that extra metadata in an underlying format as robust and flexible as plain text, it’s hard to see this ever happening, though I imagine it would be fun to try.
That’s the crux of the issue for me.
I can think of many ways I’d like to present code in my idealised programming language(s) that would use significantly more advanced layout and typography than today’s typical environments.
However, I wouldn’t actually want to use any of them unless my programming tools all supported them properly. That means the editor, but also the source control and diff tools, the code review and bug tracking systems, and so on.
In the absence of any standard conventions for how to represent that extra metadata in an underlying format as robust and flexible as plain text, it’s hard to see this ever happening, though I imagine it would be fun to try.