Re: Auto-indent new lines?

[Brenda J. Butler]

On Sat, Mar 03, 2001 at 03:27:26PM -0000, Mark Newby wrote:
> No, it doesn't.  I've tried opening a .c file and it doesn't work in that
> either --all I get is the TAB key turned off, which is so anoying.  Surely
> this is basic behaviour of any coding environment, yet it's not even
> supported in what's meant to be the best editor in the world!  I need it to
> do it in shell script, html, perl, etc, in fact, doing it in all files would
> be ideal --why isn't it default?  Maybe I should ask for it to be...
> 
> Doesn't anybody write code in Emacs?  What should I use instead then?

What kind of flame-troll is this?

Mr. Newby, try reading the documentation.  There is a lot of
documentation that comes with emacs.  Emacs is very configurable.
Lots of us configure emacs to do our bidding; you can too.

To get the emacs info pages:

within emacs, choose "help->Manuals->browse manuals with info".

Once you have the *info* buffer, then you can go from one node to
another by middle-clicking on the topic.  If you have a two-button
mouse, you can emulate the middle button by clicking both left
and right buttons at the same time.

Some topics for you to look for to solve your immediate problems:

"Init File"
"Basic Indent"
"Multi-line Indent"
"C Indent"
"Auto Fill", "Fill Prefix", "Fill Commands", "Adaptive Fill"
"Indentation Commands", "Tab Stops", "Just Spaces"
"Major Modes", "Indentation", "Text"
"Text Mode"


Oh, and when you report problems, please let us know what version
of emacs you are running.  You can get the version by typing
M-x version
The version will appear in the mini-buffer.

Note that the XEmacs and gnu emacs init files (the $HOME/.emacs
file) can have different syntaxes, so if you are using your
friend's .emacs be sure it was meant for gnu emacs.  I'm assuming
you're using gnu emacs because this is the gnu emacs mailing list.

----

By the way, a lot of emacs users (programmers mostly) prefer to
have the tab key insert spaces in programs.  But that is yet another
configurable option in emacs and you can insert tabs if you want.

You can liken your situation to someone who has only visited
Commonwealth countries, suddenly coming to visit, say, Switzerland.
People in Switzerland speak English French and German, but you are
only used to English.

There are different "preferences" out there, and no one bias
to a particular default.  Because of that, emacs is very configurable,
and can be made to suit most anyone.  But it is some work to
make it suit yourself.  And the defaults may seem weird to you,
but lots of people (the majority probably) prefer it that way.

One thing to do is collect your customisations in your .emacs file,
and as you move from one environment to another bring your .emacs
file with you.  Even if you are going from a gnu emacs installation
to an xemacs installation, having the .emacs file to start from is
easier than trying to remember by heart all the customisations you've
done over time.  Also if you happen to see someone with a nice
configuration, you can ask them for their .emacs.

But dumping on emacs when you've hardly tried it, and before
you've read the docs, is a sure way to make people want to
avoid helping you.

-- 
bjb@achilles.net
I am the "ILOVEGNU" signature virus. Just copy me to your signature.
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