Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!rutgers!ucsd!ucbvax!hplabs!hpfcso!jka
From: jka@hpfcso.HP.COM (Jay Adams)
Newsgroups: comp.emacs
Subject: Re: Two EMACS Questions
Message-ID: <8970002@hpfcso.HP.COM>
Date: 7 Sep 89 01:46:35 GMT
References: <574@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu>
Organization: Hewlett-Packard, Fort Collins, CO, USA
Lines: 30


	1. Is there a way in emacs to create "hanging indents" like
	   this one? What I would like is to be able to create a
	   paragraph formatted like this one, and not have to shift
	   each line, re-format, etc. myself.

Well, I guess what I would do is move the cursor to the beginning of
the indented line and do C-x . (set-fill-prefix).  You may also want
to do M-x auto-fill-mode.  Now the left margin should line up as you
type.  If you do M-q (fill-paragraph) on the paragraph the line that
starts with "1. " will not be moved.  Try it, you'll see what I mean.

	2. I have a large (approximately 600 lines) file. Each line in
	   the file looks like two strings separated by a tab. Since
	   the length of the first string varies, the tab is not in
	   the same place in each line. Is there any way to tell emacs
	   to take every line in the file and cause the second string
	   in each line to begin at the same column?

Without getting real fancy the only thing I can think of is to visit
the file, do M-x set-variable and set the variable tab-width to something
large like 20 (20 is the max my emacs will let me do).  See if that
makes the columns line up.  If so, do M-x mark-whole-buffer followed by
M-x untabify.  That will convert all the tabs to spaces.  To convert them 
back to 8-wide tabs set the tab-width variable back to 8, and do
M-x mark-whole-buffer and M-x tabify. 

- Jay