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Tab-key = Indent Correctly, != Insert Whatever (Was: Re: Deprecate tabs for indenting)

"Jürgen A. Erhard" jae at jerhard.org
Sun Dec 9 19:18:34 EST 2001 
>>>>> "Greg" == Greg Ewing <greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz> writes:

    Greg> Huaiyu Zhu wrote:

    >> So I'd suggest the tab advocates to consider the other side's
    >> view.

    Greg> And vice versa as well. To give one concrete example, BBEdit
    Greg> on the Mac is very definitely what Huaiyu calls a
    Greg> "tab-character" editor, both in what happens when you press
    Greg> the tab key, and in the way its block-shifting commands
    Greg> work.

Get a better editor... like Emacs >;-)

Seriously, I'm following this thread (lazily, and even more so,
disgustedly) for some time... and haven't seen my position, so for all
the world:

Pressing the tab key in python-mode (Emacs) means
"indent-for-tab-command".

It doesn't mean "insert a tab character".  And neither does it mean
"insert N spaces".  The closest it gets to is "jump to a fixed
position".  Which is context-sensitive, so it's not what most people
mean with "fixed pos".

And that's what I'm thinking when I press it (not: insert a tab now,
but indent this correctly).

I *can* configure Emacs' indentation to use spaces and tabs, or just
spaces.

Bye, J

PS: cut-and-paste a block?  Misaligned?  Ctrl-C > and Ctrl-C < shift
by the indentation.

PPS: Did I mention that I *adore* Emacs' malleability? :-)

-- 
      Jürgen A. Erhard  (juergen.erhard at gmx.net, jae at users.sf.net)
                     MARS  http://mars.jerhard.org
              Linux - Free PC Unix (http://www.linux.org)
                     Shah, shah!  Ayatollah you so!
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