Disclaimer: Do NOT use this.

This is obviously not part of unicode, might have unintended consequences. Would strongly recommend not actually using this. But its fun to play with.

Paratab

What is this?

Paratabs are tabs followed by variation selector 1.

They align content within a paragraph.

Why?

Tables

Have you ever tried to write a table in markdown? Did it look like this?

| Tables        | Are           | Cool  |
|-              |:-:            |-:     |
| col 3 is      | right-aligned | $1600 |
| col 2 is      | centered      | $12   |
| zebra stripes | are neat      | $1    |

What happens if you add more content to a cell? That's right, it gets wider.

| Tables        | Are           | Cool  |
|-              |:-:            |-:     |
| col 3 is      | right-aligned | and also sort of wide $1600 |
| col 2 is      | centered      | $12   |
| zebra stripes | are neat      | $1    |

But the other cells do not magically grow. You are gonna have to change all of them. By hand. Even worse now your git diff will look like this:

-| Tables        | Are           | Cool  |
-|-              |:-:            |-:     |
-| col 3 is      | right-aligned | $1600 |
-| col 2 is      | centered      | $12   |
-| zebra stripes | are neat      | $1    |
+| Tables        | Are           | Cool                        |
+|-              |:-:            |-:                           |
+| col 3 is      | right-aligned | and also sort of wide $1600 |
+| col 2 is      | centered      | $12                         |
+| zebra stripes | are neat      | $1                          |

Paratabs will keep columns aligned and the diff clean!

Tables ︀	Are ︀	Cool ︀
col 3 is ︀	right-aligned ︀	and also sort of wide $1600 ︀
col 2 is ︀	centered ︀	$12 ︀
zebra stripes ︀	are neat ︀	$1 ︀

End of line comments

Now I am not sure why you would use them, but I am sure everyone has seen something like this at some point:

const constant1 = 123;    // Comment describing constant1
const constant2 = "abc";  // Comment describing constant2

Again all the same issues come up. When any length changes, you'll have to update all lines in that block.

That's not only tedious but will, again, pollute your diffs.

How does this work?

Paratabs are simply a tab character followed by variation selector 1.

This means that editors without support for paratabs will render them as tabs.

Editors with support, such as VS Code with this extension, will instead render a paratab that aligns with other paratabs in the same paragraph.