[OS X Emacs] tabs in text files

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

Thank you Nick for the reply.

On 23 sept. 10, at 07:56, Nick Rothwell wrote:

> On 22 Sep 2010, at 23:32, Jean-Christophe Helary wrote:
> 
>> The file is a "standard" .txt file encoded in utf-8.
> 
> .txt files get opened in text mode. In text mode TAB calls "indent-relative", which tabs past whitespace on the previous line (to align word input with words on that line).

What is the purpose of that mode ? I suppose that would make sense in some kind of programming language mode, but in text more ? What are we supposed to use text mode for if not for typing plain text with plain tabs ?

> Meta-I will do tab-to-tab-stop, which will get you proper tabs (at least, if the tab stops are set up appropriately, which by default is at intervals of eight spaces: in that regard, tab emulates "real" tabs as found on a typewriter).
> 
> Try an eval of:
> 
> 	(setq indent-line-function 'tab-to-tab-stop)
> 
> to get this effect (in all buffers).

That you. I checked the manual and now that you told it I can find the information, but when I looked first, I did not really find anything relevant.

>> I mean trivial as in "how can Aquamacs be made to behave like all the other standards Mac editors of the box" ?
> 
> In its defence, Emacs predates the Mac. (GNU Emacs development kicked off about the same time as the Mac shipped.)

Yes, but if I were looking for such behavior, I'd use emacs from Terminal. I use Aquamacs because I want a powerful text editor that works like Mac apps are expected to work (more or less).


Jean-Christophe Helary
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