Re: Tab width oddity

[Nate Bargmann]

On Wed, 24 Sep 2014 10:35:03 +0700, Yuri Khan wrote:

> This manner of aligning will break when tab size is changed. You should
> not use it.
> 
> Tabs work consistently when they are at the start of each line. Within
> the line, use spaces exclusively.

This thread isn't about editing policy, so I'll continue to focus on the 
technical question at hand.

>> For comparison, I have posted screen shots.  The first is Emacs in a
>> terminal window with whitespace-mode on.  In both of the following
>> shots the tab highlighting character is in the correct position after
>> the '=' character but then nine positions are added instead of one:
> 
> This is a somewhat known problem[1] with whitespace-mode.
> 
> [1]: http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/WhiteSpace#toc9

That makes sense.  Interestingly, when I had opened Emacs with whitespace-
mode disabled, I saw the misalignment.  When I enabled whitespace-mode 
last night it placed the special characters as shown in the screen shots, 
but the alignment did not change.  Just now I disabled whitespace-mode 
and the buffer was realigned as I expected compared to the other editors 
and cat.  I exited Emacs and restarted and the expected alignment is 
shown.

Perhaps I had exited Emacs with whitespace-mode enabled on that 
particular buffer at some time in the past and since I am saving and 
reloading the desktop, it may have retained the previous display 
alignment from when whitespace-mode was enabled.

At least now I understand what is going on and can take corrective 
action.  Thanks much.

- Nate