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I am currently experimenting with the COBOL implementation for VSC. There are many features of this software that I really like but I cannot seem to find a very simple, basic, and fundamental setting: How can I set tabStops for COBOL? The usual 6,7,8,12,72 are just eluding me at the moment. I have tried all the things that relate to this and it seems you can have a single tabsize and that's it.

I found one previous question that was similar, but it isn't actually answered in any way I can understand. Can anybody help me with this, please?

Morepork
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  • It is likely a good idea to reference the "similar question" by posting the link in this question. – Simon Sobisch May 23 '18 at 18:20
  • Fair enough. Here's the link: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/45249594/setting-cobol-tabs-indents-in-visual-studio-code – Morepork May 24 '18 at 22:57
  • I see that you were the original responder, Simon. But a guess is not an answer and your advice to write my own extension is a bit beyond me. I AM using the COBOL extension and it does set a couple of COBOL related vertical ruled lines but these have no effect on tabbing. I have spent several hours going through all the settings (including the ones to set rulers). I can't believe that an editor as good as this has no simple way to set tab stops so I figure I must be missing something. All help appreciated. – Morepork May 24 '18 at 23:07
  • In this case you "simply" have to decide to use another editor (either COBOL specific like OCIDE or general like NPP / PsPad)... – Simon Sobisch May 25 '18 at 21:49
  • I already use PSPad for COBOL source and find it very good, but I wanted to use Visual Studio Code because it is more consistent with the other code I write (C# mainly, where I use VS) and it offers intellisense which is very useful. Looks like I'll have to stay with PSPad and give up on VSC. Thanks for responding. – Morepork May 26 '18 at 23:02
  • consider using the recent 5.x version of PSPad, recheck your needs and then post a detailed description what features of intellisense you miss with a sample source as a feature request at http://forum.pspad.com/list.php?2 – Simon Sobisch May 28 '18 at 14:32
  • That's a good suggestion, thanks. I'm still hopeful that someone will fix the VSC tab stops though. That would seem to be simpler than adding full intellisense into PSPad. – Morepork May 30 '18 at 22:39
  • If you are using plugin below, you can use the following workspace settings: "coboleditor.tabstops": [0,6,7,8,12,72] https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=bitlang.cobol – Stephen Gennard Jun 30 '18 at 22:48
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    Thank you, Stephen. I tested it and it works fine... Good job! – Morepork Jul 02 '18 at 00:23

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