Fascinating, thank you for taking the time so carefully!
Seems like the modern software practice of introducing technology that removes capabilities, and then gradually adding complexity to restore some of that functionality and calling it progress. I’m really impressed these options exist, but it does look like a nightmare to configure them.
Fundamentally I’m concerned that we’re being asked to satisfy a robot when our audience is actually humans (the machines don’t care what it looks like). Satisfying a robot is always going to require expending effort that only results in a compromise. This very impressive set of options only seems to ratchet that up a little.
But you’ve definitely given me a big push to give it a go. I’m very encouraged that clearly a lot of thought has been given to the value of whitespace. That alone gives me some faith that we haven’t entirely thrown the baby out with the bath water, and maybe the advantages that auto-formatting bring could outweigh the drawbacks it brings. On the other hand I’m concerned that few people seem to care, so thanks for your interest at least!