From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Richard Stallman Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: the overloading of `tab-width' Date: Sun, 16 Jun 2002 17:28:04 -0600 (MDT) Sender: emacs-devel-admin@gnu.org Message-ID: <200206162328.g5GNS4p12593@aztec.santafe.edu> References: <1024162700.14414.578.camel@space-ghost> Reply-To: rms@gnu.org NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost.gmane.org X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1024270246 22966 127.0.0.1 (16 Jun 2002 23:30:46 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 16 Jun 2002 23:30:46 +0000 (UTC) Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org Return-path: Original-Received: from quimby.gnus.org ([80.91.224.244]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.33 #1 (Debian)) id 17JjTp-0005yJ-00 for ; Mon, 17 Jun 2002 01:30:45 +0200 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([199.232.76.164]) by quimby.gnus.org with esmtp (Exim 3.12 #1 (Debian)) id 17Jjtn-0007s5-00 for ; Mon, 17 Jun 2002 01:57:35 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=fencepost.gnu.org) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 3.34 #1 (Debian)) id 17JjTl-0002uh-00; Sun, 16 Jun 2002 19:30:41 -0400 Original-Received: from pele.santafe.edu ([192.12.12.119]) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 3.34 #1 (Debian)) id 17JjRF-0002Ut-00; Sun, 16 Jun 2002 19:28:05 -0400 Original-Received: from aztec.santafe.edu (aztec [192.12.12.49]) by pele.santafe.edu (8.11.6+Sun/8.11.6) with ESMTP id g5GNS4Q27615; Sun, 16 Jun 2002 17:28:04 -0600 (MDT) Original-Received: (from rms@localhost) by aztec.santafe.edu (8.10.2+Sun/8.9.3) id g5GNS4p12593; Sun, 16 Jun 2002 17:28:04 -0600 (MDT) X-Authentication-Warning: aztec.santafe.edu: rms set sender to rms@aztec using -f Original-To: walters@gnu.org In-Reply-To: <1024162700.14414.578.camel@space-ghost> (message from Colin Walters on 15 Jun 2002 13:38:20 -0400) Errors-To: emacs-devel-admin@gnu.org X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.0.9 Precedence: bulk List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: , List-Id: Emacs development discussions. List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:4914 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel:4914 Now, personally, I find this irritating in the extreme. If I nest about four blocks, with a long function name or two, the lines begin to wrap very quickly. One thing I do like about the GNU Coding style is that it says to perform indentation by 2 columns. Unfortunately, believe it or not, Emacs gives me no way to deal with this. What does it mean to "deal with this"? In general, if you don't like the way a file is indented, the only way you can see it differently is to reindent it. That means changing the text. I don't see that it is particularly useful to try to avoid that consequence in this one special case. I think this problem came about because packages started using `tab-width' to convert between actual TAB and space characters. According to its docstring, it is only for display purposes, but CC mode and functions like `tabify' use it for other purposes. Everything that affects how wide characters are in display also affects the indentation functions. I don't think this feature makes sense, and I don't think it should be installed.