Re: change spaces indent in text mode?

[Tyler Smith]

Brendan Miller <catphive@catphive.net> writes:

> The only problem I have, is that m-i seems to indent by 8 spaces. I
> tried putting
>
> (setq tab-width 4) in my .emacs, but that doesn't seem to change
> anything... is m-i controlled by a different variable?

The documentation is a little confusing on this, at least to me. My
Emacs manual (info "(emacs)Text Display") says that you need to use
default-tab-width for this, as tab-width is buffer local, meaning it
only applies to the buffer you were in when you set it. However, the
help for default-tab-width (C-h v default-tab-width) says that
default-tab-width is deprecated, and tab-width should be used instead.

I think this might qualify as a buglet in the documentation, unless I'm
missing something obvious.

Tyler