How to Configure Notepad++ for fixed width tab indent

Question

NotePad++ is displaying various length tab indentation. Please suggest how to configure to display the tab charater same as notepad.

Tab difference between NotePad and NotePad++

Answer 1

NotePad++ is displaying various length tab indentation

That's completely wrong. Tabs in most code editors stop at fixed intervals equal to 4 spaces by default. You can clearly see it in your case where the distance gradually reduced until you have 4 characters, and the length is always 4 spaces. You can type more texts in the below line to see how they align

Plain text editors like Notepad OTOH typically uses 8-space tab by default, similar to many terminals. You'll also see the same effect as above until you have full 8 characters. To make tab size 8 in Notepad++ just go to Settings > Preferences > Language and change the tab size for the corresponding language (Normal Text for plain texts like yours). Many other languages' conventions may have different tab sizes, for example most languages usually prefer 4-character tabs but xml, html, Pascal/Delphi... may prefer 2-character tabs

But you shouldn't use tabs at all. The fact that tab has different interpretations in different environments makes it prohibited or discouraged in modern languages/coding conventions. For example in Python

Spaces are the preferred indentation method.

Tabs should be used solely to remain consistent with code that is already indented with tabs.

So the better solution is to check "Replace by space" in Notepad++ as can be seen in the same preferences dialog above

If you want to convert the old files to space to make it consistent then select the whole text and select Edit > Blank Operations > TAB to Space

See

• Never use hard tabs
• Notepad++ tabs are made of 4 space