Hello.

I was just copying the source-code from one of my later projects and ran into an interesting problem.
Here, try this out:

dotty

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dotty

by dw817

Cart #dotty-0 | 2023-01-02 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | License: CC4-BY-NC-SA

3

Runs great, right ? But now click Code▼ click anywhere in the source-code field, press CTRL+A, then CTRL+C, then in a new Pico-8 boot, in the source-code editor, press CTRL+V.

cls()
repeat
るきるきpset(rnd(128),rnd(128),rnd(16))
るきるきflip()
untilるきforever

るきるき ⬅️

What is happening here ?

It looks like SPACES are being replaced by some other characters. This does not just appear for me but any code you try.

Clearly it's a bug of some kind.

It's because they're non-breakable spaces:

@zep, isn't there a better way to do this? I think having users copy/paste nbsp characters into other editors might cause many problems, not just in PICO-8.

I feel like you ought to be using <pre> blocks or something like that to force spaces to be kept as-is instead of collapsed. Or maybe there's another way that's more recent than the old <pre> method.

Also a reminder that tabs should also be kept as-is, using the css style "tab-size" to set them to 2 or 4 spaces maybe.

@zep

Follow-up, looks like you want to use the css "white-space" style to prevent spaces from collapsing or wrapping:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/white-space

If you set style="white-space: pre;", it's supposed to take the line as-is. No need for nbsp characters or seemingly even a <pre> block.

Edit: Yup, I used inspect to manually change the block above. You can basically use that style the same as <pre>. Doesn't even need you to use <br> for newlines.

Edit 2: If you want lines to wrap, you can use style="white-space: pre-wrap;". This is probably not the right choice for source code, though, IMO.