[OS X Emacs] tabs in text files

Nick Rothwell nick at cassiel.com
Thu Sep 23 04:54:43 EDT 2010


On 23 Sep 2010, at 00:36, Doug McNutt wrote:

> I'm just a lurker here but I really want to find an editor that works like a typewriter - or an 026 IBM keypunch -  that I used in the 60's.

Emacs does that - you can set the tab stop positions yourself. It's always worked that way as far as I know.

> I really need my typewriter-like tabs! And I'd really like them to work with proportionally spaced fonts.

I've never completely wrapped my head around editing proportional fonts: do you want the tab stops to count characters, or to move to a screen position closest to (say) a nominal number of M-spaces?

> The last time I tried emacs there were no typewriter tab stops. It only allowed selection of a constant width for all columns in a file. Has that changed?

As I said, I think Emacs has had tab stops for ages - I remember them from 20 years ago.

There's also a "tab-width" variable which is the on-screen width that Emacs should use to interpret an actual tab character - perhaps you're thinking of this?

	-- N.


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