Re: problem getting hooks to be active

[pemente@northpark.edu (Eric Pement)]

kai.grossjohann@gmx.net (Kai Großjohann) wrote in message news:<84u18j2i16.fsf@slowfox.is.informatik.uni-duisburg.de>...
> pemente@northpark.edu (Eric Pement) writes:
> 
> >    (add-hook 'sgml-mode-hook'
> >         (lambda ()
> >           (setq tab-width 2)
> 
> Do you know what tab-width does?

   Yes. It controls the number of columns that are used to represent
TAB characters embedded in the document. (As an aside, I have a page
on Emacs and Tabs here, which is the limits of my knowledge here:
http://www.student.northpark.edu/pemente/emacs_tabs.htm)

> I'm guessing that the code is doing
> what you tell it to, but it's not what you expect.

   Normally, that's a reasonable guess, but C-h v (describe-variable)
confirms that my variables are not being set. When I followed the
advice of Peter Solodov to evaluate the code in the *scratch* buffer,
I instantly recognize the change, so my guess for now is that I have
other code in my .emacs file which conflicts with it.

> Hm.  Well, do you have tab characters in your files?

   Yes. Basically, I edit XML files written by other people, people
who don't know about TABS and have no preference either way. The
spacing is inconsistent and irregular (regardless of which tab-width I
select), and so I'd want to use just hard spaces for spacing, so
whoever works on these files after me will at least have something
consistent to work with.


> A completely wild speculation is that you actually want to set
> sgml-indent-data to t to make it indent more often.  Then you want to
> set sgml-indent-step to 2 (which is the default, afaik).

    But the problem is that none of the settings in the "block" are
being obeyed. But I can try your suggestion manually and see what
results I get.

> And for filling, maybe you want to turn on auto-fill mode?

   Already on, along with abbrev-mode (a real time-saver for me).


> Does this help?

   It's encouraging to get good responses. I'll try your suggestions
about sgml-indent-data and sgml-indent-step to see what I get. Thanks
for answering.

-- 
Eric Pement