bug#37183: 26.2 Never for Tab-Always-Indent

bug#37183: 26.2 Never for Tab-Always-Indent

[Charles Jackson via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors]

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The `tab-always-indent' variable should have a 'never' option that will make TAB just insert a tab character without indenting at all.

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bug#37183: 26.2 Never for Tab-Always-Indent

[Lars Ingebrigtsen]

Charles Jackson <charles.b.jackson@protonmail.com> writes:

> The `tab-always-indent' variable should have a 'never' option that
> will make TAB just insert a tab character without indenting at all.

I think that might make sense...  On the other hand, you can just
globally set the TAB key to insert a TAB character, so I'm not quite
sure whether it's very useful.

Does anybody have an opinion here?

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no

bug#37183: 26.2 Never for Tab-Always-Indent

[Stefan Kangas]

Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes:

> Charles Jackson <charles.b.jackson@protonmail.com> writes:
>
>> The `tab-always-indent' variable should have a 'never' option that
>> will make TAB just insert a tab character without indenting at all.
>
> I think that might make sense...  On the other hand, you can just
> globally set the TAB key to insert a TAB character, so I'm not quite
> sure whether it's very useful.
>
> Does anybody have an opinion here?

(How would you set it globally?  If you use `global-set-key' any local
bindings would shadow it, right?)

FWIW, I think the option makes sense, with or without the ability to set
it in another way.  It's a logical addition and could make things easier
for users.

bug#37183: 26.2 Never for Tab-Always-Indent

[Lars Ingebrigtsen]

Stefan Kangas <stefan@marxist.se> writes:

>> I think that might make sense...  On the other hand, you can just
>> globally set the TAB key to insert a TAB character, so I'm not quite
>> sure whether it's very useful.
>>
>> Does anybody have an opinion here?
>
> (How would you set it globally?  If you use `global-set-key' any local
> bindings would shadow it, right?)

I was thinking about setting TAB in `overriding-terminal-local-map'...
(I've never used that map myself, though, so I may be misunderstanding
how that variable works.)

> FWIW, I think the option makes sense, with or without the ability to set
> it in another way.  It's a logical addition and could make things easier
> for users.

Yeah, it is pretty logical addition.  The main problem with doing
something like this is that there's a bunch of other similar variables,
like c-tab-always-indent/snmp-tab-always-indent/opascal-tab-always-indents
(and seemingly an infinite number for some reason), and for consistency,
we'd have to allow `never' for all of these (and change all the usage
sites).

I'm not sure that's worth it if there is a simple way of binding TAB.
We could just mention that in the doc string of `tab-always-indent'.

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no

bug#37183: 26.2 Never for Tab-Always-Indent

[Lars Ingebrigtsen]

I just tried it, and it seems to work:

(setq overriding-terminal-local-map
      (let ((map (make-sparse-keymap)))
	(define-key map [?\t] 'self-insert-command)
	map))

By the way, that reminds me how annoying it is that we don't have a
"non-imperative" version to define keymaps.

(setq overriding-terminal-local-map
      (make-sparse-keymap
       '(([?\t] 'self-insert-command
         ("a" 'some-command)))))

(or a variation thereof) would seem more natural.

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no

bug#37183: 26.2 Never for Tab-Always-Indent

[Stefan Kangas]

Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes:

> I'm not sure that's worth it if there is a simple way of binding TAB.
> We could just mention that in the doc string of `tab-always-indent'.

True.  I think adding it to the doc string makes a great deal of sense.

We should also consider that this will likely only ever be used by a
small minority of users.

bug#37183: 26.2 Never for Tab-Always-Indent

[Lars Ingebrigtsen]

Stefan Kangas <stefan@marxist.se> writes:

> Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes:
>
>> I'm not sure that's worth it if there is a simple way of binding TAB.
>> We could just mention that in the doc string of `tab-always-indent'.
>
> True.  I think adding it to the doc string makes a great deal of sense.
>
> We should also consider that this will likely only ever be used by a
> small minority of users.

Yup.  I've now amended the doc string and I'm closing this bug report.

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no