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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxn!ihnp4!qantel!hplabs!sdcrdcf!sdcsvax!sdcc3!sdcarl!rusty
From: rusty@sdcarl.UUCP (rusty c. wright)
Newsgroups: net.emacs
Subject: re: c-mode in gnu emacs
Message-ID: <222@sdcarl.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 15-Jul-85 11:46:14 EDT
Article-I.D.: sdcarl.222
Posted: Mon Jul 15 11:46:14 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 19-Jul-85 03:19:20 EDT
Reply-To: rusty@sdcarl.UUCP (Rusty Wright)
Organization: Computer Audio Research Lab, UCSD, San Diego, Calif.
Lines: 52


	From kuling!ihnp4!okstate!andersa Mon Jul 15 07:16:44 1985
	Date: Sun, 14 Jul 85 22:21:22 -0200
	From: ihnp4!kuling!andersa
	To: sdcarl!rusty
	Subject: Re: Tabbing in C Mode (Gnu Emacs)
	In-Reply-To: <220@sdcarl.UUCP>
	Organization: The Royal Inst. of Techn., Stockholm
	
	In article <220@sdcarl.UUCP> you write:
	>That's STUPID!  Why in the world should anybody have to type ctl-q in
	>front of a tab everywhere else when they don't have to when they're
	>at the beginning of a line.  It's a COMPLETELY MORONIC concept.
	
	I don't agree. TAB rather often seems to be bound to some function
	other than ^R Self Insert, for instance to perform mode-dependent
	indenting, and therefore you can't be sure you'll get a true (space
	mod 8) unless you use the ^R Quoted Insert facility.
	
	Thank you for listening,
	   Anders Andersson
	   ...!seismo!mcvax!enea!kuling!andersa

i must be totally hidebound on this issue.  it's probably because all
my life on computers the tab key has always inserted a tab in my file
and moved the cursor over to the next tab stop.  also, as an
experiment, i decided to switch over to emacs (from vi) when gnu emacs
came out.  so all of my experience with a text editor has been with
vi.  i suspect that a big part of the problem is psychological on the
part of emacs users; you are used to having an inferior relationship
with the tab key.  naturally one wants an indent-line-according-to-mode
command, but i'm not sure if it should be bound to the tab key.
perhaps it should be bound to m-tab (esc tab) or ctl-x tab.  or, even
better, it should run indent-line-according-to-mode when dot is at the
beginning of the line (or when there are only spaces to the left of
it) but everywhere else it should run self-insert-command of a tab.  i
think that would be the best solution.  you poor emacs users have been
brain- washed into thinking that the wonky behavior of the tab key is
acceptable.

i'm forever aggravated by software that has wired into it some half-
baked way of doing something; probably because the programmer was too
lazy to expend the extra effort to do it right.  this is why my
posting to netnews was done in such a hysterical manner.  i'm hoping
that someone out there will wake up and see that users shouldn't have
to put shackles on in order to use some software.  i guess maybe it
was ok back when people were programming in assembly language (or
teco), but nowadays it's not.

-- 
	rusty c. wright
	{ucbvax,ihnp4,akgua,hplabs,sdcsvax}!sdcarl!rusty