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After reading the title and the first two sentences ("Vertical tabs in Visual Studio Code" and "I love vertical tabs. I use them wherever possible."), I first t

After reading the title and the first two sentences ("Vertical tabs in Visual Studio Code" and "I love vertical tabs. I use them wherever possible."), I first thought that the author loves using the vertical tab ASCII/Unicode character (U+000B, in C/POSIX: '\v') in his code, since I can easily imagine that Visual Studio Code has difficulties handling this character (I did not test it, though).

thiht 3y ago
Same for me, I got very confused for 2 minutes. Not sure why though, is there something with the way it’s phrased that makes us think of the tab character? It’s not particularly ambiguous and I’m very aware that vertical tabs (not the character) exist so I have no idea why I first thought of the obscure vertical tab character
- aleph_minus_one 3y ago
  > Not sure why though, is there something with the way it’s phrased that makes us think of the tab character? For me, a reason might be that I am not a native English speaker. The "tab" meaning of the character, key, and typewriter mechanism is quite similar in German as in English ("[der] Tabulator" as the encompassing term, and specifically "[das] Tabulatorzeichen" (the character), "[die] Tabulatortaste" (the key), and "[der] Tabulatormechanismus" (the mechanism on a typewriter)). On the other hand, the term for the GUI elements (derived from the office stationery) is quite different in German: "[der] Registerreiter" (for the GUI element that you click on to switch between tabs) and "[die] Registerkarte" (the content of a tab (tab page)). While I know all the listed meanings of the English word "tab", the meaning of the first concept is the much more "natural" one for me.
  - thiht 3y ago
    I’m French so it might be the same reason, the tab character is tab, but the tab GUI element is « onglet » It’s funny how the brain works sometimes.

thiht 3y ago

Same for me, I got very confused for 2 minutes. Not sure why though, is there something with the way it’s phrased that makes us think of the tab character? It’s not particularly ambiguous and I’m very aware that vertical tabs (not the character) exist so I have no idea why I first thought of the obscure vertical tab character

aleph_minus_one 3y ago
> Not sure why though, is there something with the way it’s phrased that makes us think of the tab character? For me, a reason might be that I am not a native English speaker. The "tab" meaning of the character, key, and typewriter mechanism is quite similar in German as in English ("[der] Tabulator" as the encompassing term, and specifically "[das] Tabulatorzeichen" (the character), "[die] Tabulatortaste" (the key), and "[der] Tabulatormechanismus" (the mechanism on a typewriter)). On the other hand, the term for the GUI elements (derived from the office stationery) is quite different in German: "[der] Registerreiter" (for the GUI element that you click on to switch between tabs) and "[die] Registerkarte" (the content of a tab (tab page)). While I know all the listed meanings of the English word "tab", the meaning of the first concept is the much more "natural" one for me.
- thiht 3y ago
  I’m French so it might be the same reason, the tab character is tab, but the tab GUI element is « onglet » It’s funny how the brain works sometimes.