From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: egarrulo@gmail.com Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: Elastic tabstops? Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2009 11:13:39 -0800 (PST) Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: <9c218361-d7f3-450a-bfcb-4fa278debec9@z9g2000yqi.googlegroups.com> References: <6f93bd5c-238c-4da2-9224-1a53074c3a28@o36g2000yqh.googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1235677258 18498 80.91.229.12 (26 Feb 2009 19:40:58 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2009 19:40:58 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Thu Feb 26 20:42:14 2009 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1Lcm7Y-0006Bu-Ja for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Thu, 26 Feb 2009 20:42:12 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:34785 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1Lcm6D-0002us-Iy for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Thu, 26 Feb 2009 14:40:49 -0500 Original-Path: news.stanford.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!postnews.google.com!z9g2000yqi.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help Original-Lines: 18 Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 94.36.87.227 Original-X-Trace: posting.google.com 1235675619 18555 127.0.0.1 (26 Feb 2009 19:13:39 GMT) Original-X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Original-NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2009 19:13:39 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: z9g2000yqi.googlegroups.com; posting-host=94.36.87.227; posting-account=AFCLjAoAAABJAOf_HjgEEEi3ty-lG5m2 User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.7) Gecko/20070914 Firefox/2.0.0.7,gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe) Original-Xref: news.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:167108 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:62410 Archived-At: Thank you very much for your offer, Alan :-) Basically, he's saying that tab's width should not be based on counting character, which is a low level concept. Instead, hitting Tab should create a table cell of a kind, which spans multiple lines. Then the editor will always keep aligned any text on adjacent lines which is entered after the nth tab, no matter how long the "cell"'s text length is and even if the font is not monospaced. Think about what align-regexp does, but done live and working with proportional fonts as well. Indeed, the demo Java applet uses a proportional font, and if you move any end of line comment belonging to a block of lines, all other comments move to keep perfectly aligned. I think that is quite tricky to implement, more so if you try to retrofit an already existing mode. BTW I'm not asking for such an high- tech solution. I'd be quite happy if indentation would work as I'm entering lines when I'm using a proportional font, which I find easier to read.