Re: turning off all indentation

[Lowell Gilbert]

Lynn Newton <lynn.newton@gmail.com> writes:

>> (add-hook 'after-change-major-mode-hook
>>           (lambda nil
>>             (local-set-key [return] nil)
>>             (local-set-key [tab] nil)))
>
> With this, if I start up Emacs and start to edit a file myfile.c,
> I get this far:
>
> main()
> {
>         int i
>
> Pretend there's a tab in front of int. When I add a semicolon
> to that line, it backindents it to column 2 (counting from 0),
> which is what I meant about the local modes taking over.
>
> If I edit a plain text file, e.g., myfile.txt or without an
> extension, a tab indents me only four spaces. If a line
> is indented more spaces, typing a tab on the line below
> indents the next line to whatever column the previous
> line is indented to.
>
> Mind you, I think that's clever and wonderful, but what
> my friend wants is whenever he presses a TAB key,
> in whatever mode, and in whatever context, it skips
> to the next 8-character tab stop, regardless of the mode,
> the position of the line above, etc. And whenever he
> hits RETURN, he wants the cursor to go to column zero
> of the next line, period, no ifs ands or buts.
>
> And I'm pretty sure that when he hits other keys, such
> as semicolons, curly brackets, and other syntactically
> significant characters within some given mode, he
> wants it *not* to change the alignment of the current
> line or any other line nearby.
>
> One would think that would be pretty easy to do, but the
> subtleties of various languages and accompanying modes
> are so thoroughly built in that it's hard to escape them.
> Most people consider that a Good Thing.

Yes.  To follow the approach, you'd need to extend it to all of the
other keys that should strictly self-insert.  It might be easier to just
delete the local keymap.  On the other hand, deleting the local keymap
in all keymaps would make some non-programming modes (like dired and
info) pretty much useless.