[comp.emacs] How do I set the tab-width in emacs?

nick@esacs.UUCP (Nick Tsivranidis) (10/19/90)

	I would like to set the tab-width in c-mode (or all
modes) to 4. There is a variable (tab-width) which will do
what I want, but I can't get this to work from my .emacs
file. I tried something like:
	(setq tab-width 4)
I am using GNU emacs, if it makes a difference. 

	Along the same lines, is there any on-line info on all the
user settable variables of emacs (i.e. things I can set in my .emacs).
My method so far has been to go in the lisp/ directory and grep around
for words that are similar to what I want, but as you can tell, it is
not always a good one!

						- nick -

P.S. Is there a gnu.emacs newsgroup? In my .newsrc there are a few
     gnu.emacs.* but no gnu.emacs.

jlange@oracle.com (Jim Lange) (10/25/90)

In article <1216@esacs.UUCP> nick@esacs.UUCP (Nick Tsivranidis) writes:

	   I would like to set the tab-width in c-mode (or all
   modes) to 4. There is a variable (tab-width) which will do
   what I want, but I can't get this to work from my .emacs
   file. I tried something like:
	   (setq tab-width 4)

In order for the tab-width variable to be recognized, the variable
indent-tabs-mode must also be set to nil (this tells emacs to use spaces
instead of tabs when indenting).

	   Along the same lines, is there any on-line info on all the
   user settable variables of emacs (i.e. things I can set in my .emacs).

The command M-x edit-options will display all user setable variables and allow
you to interactively redefine them.  C-h m will give help on this special
'Options' mode, but just browsing through the variables and descriptions will
tell you what you want to know.  Also, I believe there is an info node (C-h i)
that lists all the variables.

Jim Lange
Oracle Corporation