[OS X Emacs] tabs in text files

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

On 23 sept. 10, at 17:59, Nick Rothwell wrote:

> 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!)

Plain tab is \t.

And I was not aware emacs was trying to emulate a typewriter :)

>> 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...

Indeed, but check "tab" in the manual and you'll see many things that kind of relate to indentation (and in my mind indentation relates to the space between the margin and the first word, not the space between words) but not really to the tabulation character proper.

>> 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 know, but (hum) VI is hardly WYSIWYG and still puts a tab character when people hit a tab key (even though there were no Tab keys on typewriters).

Also, TextEdit is not exactly WYSIWYG in text mode, it is slightly more powerful than Nano if you know a few tricks but most people don't. And it accepts most readline shortcuts too, like emacs.

> 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.

I suppose you mean "_by_ linking". Yes it does, and maybe this Tab=M-i thing could be an option for text mode. I don't know.


Jean-Christophe Helary
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