From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: "Pascal J. Bourguignon" Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: tab character Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2011 17:18:24 +0200 Organization: Informatimago Message-ID: <87d3dibgzj.fsf@kuiper.lan.informatimago.com> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1332968271 11172 80.91.229.3 (28 Mar 2012 20:57:51 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2012 20:57:51 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Wed Mar 28 22:57:51 2012 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1SCzwE-0004Fa-Rw for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Wed, 28 Mar 2012 22:57:50 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:58070 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1SCzwC-0005xy-IR for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Wed, 28 Mar 2012 16:57:48 -0400 Original-Path: usenet.stanford.edu!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help Original-Lines: 48 Original-X-Trace: individual.net Rw0Bfj6E8Hv3gAwUaxM88wH3HnaSIav2qEhr2LLT5g7baTTE+8 Cancel-Lock: sha1:M2E1NzI5YTJlMzI0YzFmZGYzZTA4ZjI0NGU4YjkzMTBkZGRkYzBjOQ== sha1:qtQuOVLrL4MkkOlx5Gb+HK0IZ8o= Face: iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAADAAAAAwAQMAAABtzGvEAAAABlBMVEUAAAD///+l2Z/dAAAA oElEQVR4nK3OsRHCMAwF0O8YQufUNIQRGIAja9CxSA55AxZgFO4coMgYrEDDQZWPIlNAjwq9 033pbOBPtbXuB6PKNBn5gZkhGa86Z4x2wE67O+06WxGD/HCOGR0deY3f9Ijwwt7rNGNf6Oac l/GuZTF1wFGKiYYHKSFAkjIo1b6sCYS1sVmFhhhahKQssRjRT90ITWUk6vvK3RsPGs+M1RuR mV+hO/VvFAAAAABJRU5ErkJggg== X-Accept-Language: fr, es, en User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/23.3 (gnu/linux) Original-Xref: usenet.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:189499 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:84179 Archived-At: Rustom Mody writes: > On Thu, Oct 27, 2011 at 8:01 PM, Ludwig, Mark wrote: > > If you just want it to insert a TAB character every time, just map the key to self-insert-command. > > Yes I gathered that this is the only way (or  C-q TAB).  Seems fairly low-level for such a basic usage... > > Are you familiar with M-i that runs tab-to-tab-stop?  That might be what you want, too, especially if you want spaces inserted to 'equal' what the TAB character would do on a typewriter, for instance. > > I need tab to be entered as tab without any questions or ambiguity (think makefiles?) emacs already inserts TAB without any question asked in Makefiles. The creator of make said it was his biggest error ever to have specified TABs for makefiles! http://www.faqs.org/docs/artu/ch15s04.html No discussion of make(1) would be complete without an acknowledgement that it includes one of the worst design botches in the history of Unix. The use of tab characters as a required leader for command lines associated with a production means that the interpretation of a makefile can change drastically on the basis of invisible differences in whitespace. Why the tab in column 1? Yacc was new, Lex was brand new. I hadn't tried either, so I figured this would be a good excuse to learn. After getting myself snarled up with my first stab at Lex, I just did something simple with the pattern newline-tab. It worked, it stayed. And then a few weeks later I had a user population of about a dozen, most of them friends, and I didn't want to screw up my embedded base. The rest, sadly, is history. -- Stuart Feldman We told you, TABs are evil! Do not propagate them! -- __Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/ A bad day in () is better than a good day in {}.