On Thursday 13 April 2006 11:01, "Kevin O'Gorman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote about 'Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] vim c syntax': > set expandtab
Converting tabs to spaces or vice-versa automatically is evil. They have distinct uses so just don't do it. Tabs are used to indicate separate "levels" of text where items are or can be nested and are appropriate for use in tables of contents (subsection titles have one more tab than section titles, section titles have one more tab than chapter titles, etc.), lists (numbered or bulletted), block quotation (imagine quoting an article that had quoted a speech), and the nested block structure of many programming languages. In addition their the language-specific roles, spaces are used to align arbitrary text, tabs alone are inappropriate because of the varying tab settings on varying computers. Even if 8 spaces was some kind of standard, it makes very little sense in non-fixed-width fonts, and trying to force end-user behavior is both arrogant and doomed to failure. (That's not what standards are about anyway -- standards give the end-user/consumer MORE choice by forcing programmer/producer OUTPUT to be interchangeable.) Tabs and spaces together can also be used for alignment, and when done properly the output changes based on the end-users preferences but looks good independent of those preferences. How this is done is left as an exercise to the reader. Tabs w/o spaces can only be used for alignment when the file format you are dealing with allows you to embed information about what tab-stops you are using. (Thus, ignoring the users' preferences entirely.) > set shiftwidth=4 " sw, number of spaces shifted left and right This is all the OP needed to get the behavior he wanted. For completeness, here's the relevant lines of my .vimrc: set ts=2 " Small tabs set sw=2 " Matching shift width set list " Visible tabs set ai " Auto-indent set si " Smart indent (I like my tabs /tiny/.) -- "If there's one thing we've established over the years, it's that the vast majority of our users don't have the slightest clue what's best for them in terms of package stability." -- Gentoo Developer Ciaran McCreesh
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