[OS X Emacs] tabs in text files

[Nick Rothwell]

On 23 Sep 2010, at 03:14, Jean-Christophe Helary wrote:

> 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 ?

Fair question. If "text" means unformatted lines of words, I can see the justification (pardon the pun) for alignment of inter-word spaces.

(We could also argue about what "plain tab" means. Typewriters don't have tab characters!)

> 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 know my way around the Emacs interactive help system just about well enough to find such things out...

> 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).

The Emacs world and the WYSIWYG world are (IMHO) very different, and I don't think it's easy to reconcile them. I think Aquamacs does a very good job of working like Emacs should, but linking into the Mac world enough to help smooth some of the rough edges.

	-- N.


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