Re: Tabs and Spaces

[pjb@informatimago.com (Pascal J. Bourguignon)]

use.address@my.homepage.invalid (Chris Gordon-Smith) writes:

> Hello All
>
> I have recenly started using emacs for programming, after years using 
> KDevelop. One problem I have is indenting code. I have my own indentation 
> style. and ideally I would like to setup emacs to support it automatically. 
> However, in the short term I'll settle for having emacs convert a TAB 
> keypress into the correct number of spaces to fill whitespace up to the 
> next tabstop.
>
> At the moment I have
>
> (global-set-key (kbd "TAB") 'self-insert-command) 
>
> in my .emacs to force insertion of a tab, but I have to keep invoking 
> untabify manually (otherwise my code looks misaligned when I upload it to 
> Google Code).
>
> Can anyone help.

You shouldn't insert TAB, this is very bad.  At the very least, you
may compute the number of spaces you need to insert and insert them
rather.

But depending on the language you use, a different mode will be used
to edit your source and each mode may provide its own indenting rules.

In the case of Lisp, you may add a indent-function property to the
plist of the operator name.

In the case of C, you may customize the variable: c-offsets-alist. See
also: c-style-alist ; perhaps there's already a style defined that
you'll like.


-- 
__Pascal Bourguignon__