cosell@bbn.com (Bernie Cosell) (02/10/88)
Two questions about tabs from within vi: a) for a variety of reasons, I _despise_ true TAB chars. Is there a way to have vi _never_ use them (and just always use the right number of spaces). b) If I can't have (a), can I at least prevent vi from autoindenting by using tabs? I generally run along with :set ai, and the shiftwidth=4, and what it seems happens is that vi uses a TAB character for every <shiftwidth> of indenting (which of course looks _great_ once I go back to UNIX where the tab chars become 8 positions again. :-() Thanks!. __ / ) Bernie Cosell /--< _ __ __ o _ BBN Labs, Cambridge, MA 02238 /___/_(<_/ (_/) )_(_(<_ cosell@bbn.com
hansm@cwi.nl (Hans Mulder) (02/11/88)
In article <20655@bbn.COM> cosell@bbn.com (Bernie Cosell) writes: > >Two questions about tabs from within vi: > a) for a variety of reasons, I _despise_ true TAB chars. Is there a > way to have vi _never_ use them (and just always use the right number > of spaces). I'm not exactly sure what you want. If you want to replace all TABs in your file by the correct number of spaces, type 1G!Gexpand<CR>. This runs your entire buffer through expand(1). If you don't want to see TABs displayed as whitespace, you might want to :set list. This displays (among other things) tabs as ^I. If you don't want vi to use TABs to position your cursor, remove the pt capability from your TERMCAP entry. > b) If I can't have (a), can I at least prevent vi from autoindenting > by using tabs? () That happens to be easy, just :set tabstops=1024. As you can't have lines that long this effectively stops vi from ever producing tabs. Of course, your file should not contain any TABs when you do this. (And the output of the :map command is messed up.) > I generally run along with :set ai, and the > shiftwidth=4, and what it seems happens is that vi uses > a TAB character for every <shiftwidth> of indenting (which of course > looks _great_ once I go back to UNIX where the tab chars become 8 > positions again. :- You can correct this by running your file through expand -4. I am currently running vi version 3.7, 6/7/85 under BSD 4.3, with :set ai sw=2 and it works correctly, i.e. it generates a TAB for every <tabstop> of indenting. Hope this helps, > Bernie Cosell Hans Mulder
donw@cognos.uucp (Don Walker) (02/22/88)
In article <20655@bbn.COM> cosell@bbn.com (Bernie Cosell) writes: > >Two questions about tabs from within vi: > a) for a variety of reasons, I _despise_ true TAB chars. Is there a > way to have vi _never_ use them (and just always use the right number > of spaces). > b) If I can't have (a), can I at least prevent vi from autoindenting > by using tabs? I generally run along with :set ai, and the > shiftwidth=4, and what it seems happens is that vi uses > a TAB character for every <shiftwidth> of indenting (which of course > looks _great_ once I go back to UNIX where the tab chars become 8 > positions again. :-() I work around b) by setting tabstop to some value that I will never be doing autoindent at (I use set tabstop=80) and setting shiftwidth to the desired indent value. This gives you autoindenting without tabs. It does have two drawbacks: 1. Any documents that you edit that do contain tabs usually look very fragmented. This is usually easy to catch. 2. You can't use the TAB key. -- Don Walker Cognos Incorporated S-mail: P.O. Box 9707 Voice: (613) 738-1440 3755 Riverside Drive FAX: (613) 738-0002 Ottawa, Ontario uucp: decvax!utzoo!dciem!nrcaer!cognos!donw CANADA K1G 3Z4
cosell@bbn.com (Bernie Cosell) (02/25/88)
In article <2318@cognos.UUCP> donw@cognos.UUCP (Don Walker) writes: > >2. You can't use the TAB key. > Since I posted my original request I have pushed through and fixed things for myself. As for dealing with tabcharacters in the document, there are two approaches: one (As Don mentioned) is to set ts=<large> the other is to set ts=8 (that is, just leave it alone). If you do the former, then you'll do just as I had originally asked and NEVER get any tabs in your document, but if you ever inherit a doc that has them you're in for a BIG surprise. I was going to cope with this just by having something bound to :%!expand or some such (I may still!), but since I share sources with folk who are not as picky about TAB chars, it'll drive RCS *wild* when I check the stuff back in, I really can't do the infinite-ts hack. So i live with ts=8. BUT... here's the trick that has made my life MUCH MUCH better -- very simple, really: (Insert enough ^V's to make it work! :-) -- :map! <tab> <space><space><space><space> It isn't as nice as having REAL soft tab stops, but it works REAL good! Thanks for all the advice! __ / ) Bernie Cosell /--< _ __ __ o _ BBN Labs, Cambridge, MA 02238 /___/_(<_/ (_/) )_(_(<_ cosell@bbn.com