How do tabs work for text boxes?

Question

I'm making a game gui api and I'm wondering how to implement tabs. I'm using freetype for text. When I try to render '\t' It looks like a square. I'm wondering how tabs are implemented because they are not a fixed width.

Thanks

Answer 1

The simplest strategy is to swap a tab out for a some number of spaces. I.e. when the user pushes tab, pretend they pushed tab four times instead. (Or just print out four spaces, whatever works for you)

Answer 2

For a fixed-width font you could compute how many spaces to the next tab stop, but the general solution is to stop rendering when you hit a tab, move to the next tabstop, and then render the text that comes after the tab character starting from there. Where the tabstops are is up to you, but a good default is probably something like every 8 ems.