Next: Motion by Indent, Previous: Relative Indent, Up: Indentation
This section explains the mechanism for user-specified tab stops and the mechanisms that use and set them. The name “tab stops” is used because the feature is similar to that of the tab stops on a typewriter. The feature works by inserting an appropriate number of spaces and tab characters to reach the next tab stop column; it does not affect the display of tab characters in the buffer (see Usual Display). Note that the <TAB> character as input uses this tab stop feature only in a few major modes, such as Text mode. See Tab Stops.
This command inserts spaces or tabs before point, up to the next tab stop column defined by
tab-stop-list.
This variable defines the tab stop columns used by
tab-to-tab-stop. It should be eithernil, or a list of increasing integers, which need not be evenly spaced. The list is implicitly extended to infinity through repetition of the interval between the last and penultimate elements (ortab-widthif the list has fewer than two elements). A value ofnilmeans a tab stop everytab-widthcolumns.Use M-x edit-tab-stops to edit the location of tab stops interactively.