Unable to Set Tab Width

[Chris]

Despite countless efforts, I cannot set the tab width
in emacs to 2 spaces instead of 4.

>uname -a
HP-UX host B.11.00 U 9000/785 2007718834 unlimited-user license

>/usr/local/bin/emacs-21.2.1
>cat .emacs
(setq default-tab-width 2)

I thought the above command would set the tab width to 2,
but it is stuck at 4!

That is all I have in the emacs file.

I did have that long list of tab stops such as 2 4 6 8 ...
but that didn't help.

Any suggestions?

It's driving me nuts while editing perl or java.

I thought emacs was configurable... no?

I have the same trouble with a Win32 version of emacs (20.7.1).

Any help appreciated,
Chris