Re: Make real tabs that stay tabs

[Bastian Beischer <bastian.beischer@rwth-aachen.de>]

On Tue, Feb 13, 2018 at 11:50 PM, Harry Putnam <reader@newsguy.com> wrote:
> I know how to insert tabs in emacs I thought.
>
> C-q <tab>
>
> And sure enough the cursor jumps like a tab was inserted.
>
> So insert 2 or three but OOPS If I decide to back one out with
> backspace I'm backing by spaces not by tabs.
>
> Seems like if I take care to insert a real tab then it ought to act
> like a real tab when I backspace over it too.
>
> Recently I found myself correcting an rsnapshot.conf file where things
> MUST be separated by tabs.. one way to test is to back over what is
> there and see if your cursor jumps a tabs worth.

Do you know about "whitespace-mode"? It will highlight tabs with a
different face (at least if you configure it to), so you don't need to
fallback to such workarounds. It has many other nice features as well.

>  But apparently that
> cannot be done with emacs.
>
> I seem to recall being able to do that in the past.
>
> Can someone explain this to me.
>
>
>
>