display of TAB character

display of TAB character

[georg1000]

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In http://www.jwz.org/doc/tabs-vs-spaces.html Jamie Zawinski
writes concerning the display of the TAB character:

    A third interpretation is for the ASCII TAB character to mean
    ``indent to the next tab stop,'' where the tab stops are set
    arbitrarily: they might not necessarily be equally distanced from
    each other. Most word processors can do this; 
    Emacs can do this. I don't think vi can do this, but I'm not sure.

I was unable to find out how to do this. The only way to change
the display of TAB is by changing `tab-width', which can only be set to
a constant value. I do not want to change the behaviour of the
tab key (with `tab-stop-list' for example), but the display of the TAB
key.

Thanks in advance, Georg.

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Re: display of TAB character

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2003 00:15:35 +0100 (MET)
> From: georg1000@gmx.de
> 
> In http://www.jwz.org/doc/tabs-vs-spaces.html Jamie Zawinski
> writes concerning the display of the TAB character:
> 
>     A third interpretation is for the ASCII TAB character to mean
>     ``indent to the next tab stop,'' where the tab stops are set
>     arbitrarily: they might not necessarily be equally distanced from
>     each other. Most word processors can do this; 
>     Emacs can do this. I don't think vi can do this, but I'm not sure.
> 
> I was unable to find out how to do this.

How did you look?  I typed "i tab stops" in the Emacs manual and was
immediately placed in the section which explains how to set the tab
stops.  I think that's what Jamie meant in the quoted fragment, but
I'm not sure if this does what you want.  Does it?

Re: display of TAB character

[Kai Grossjohann]

georg1000@gmx.de writes:

> I was unable to find out how to do this. The only way to change
> the display of TAB is by changing `tab-width', which can only be set to
> a constant value.

That's also what I think.

> I do not want to change the behaviour of the tab key (with
> `tab-stop-list' for example), but the display of the TAB key.

To change the display of the tab key, you have to paint your keyboard ;-)

Kai

Re: display of TAB character

[Georg Wittig]

Kai Grossjohann <kai@emptydomain.de> writes:

> georg1000@gmx.de writes:
> 
> > I was unable to find out how to do this. The only way to change
> > the display of TAB is by changing `tab-width', which can only be set to
> > a constant value.
> 
> That's also what I think.
> 
> > I do not want to change the behaviour of the tab key (with
> > `tab-stop-list' for example), but the display of the TAB key.
> 
> To change the display of the tab key, you have to paint your keyboard ;-)


Here's a small code sequence you can put into your ~/.emacs. It
assigns a color to the TAB-Key and to a trailing space character at
the end of the line. I think I found it in this news group some years
ago. Works for me quite well and fast.



(custom-set-faces
 '(my-tab-face            ((((class color)) (:background "lemon chiffon"))) t)
 '(my-trailing-space-face ((((class color)) (:background "Gold"))) t))

(add-hook 'font-lock-mode-hook
  (function
    (lambda ()
      (setq font-lock-keywords
            (append font-lock-keywords
                    '(("\t+" (0 'my-tab-face t))
                      ("[ \t]+$" (0 'my-trailing-space-face t))))))))

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