bug#4743: fundamental mode not sufficiently fundamental yet

[Harald Dunkel]

On 10/19/09 04:04, Stefan Monnier wrote:
> > Actually I just want to enter some text without having to care about
> > different modes or redefining some internal functions.
>
> Looks like maybe you don't want Emacs.

Thats surely not the case. I am using Emacs since the early 90s.
Sometimes I just don't want any context sensitive operations.
Looking at other lines for indentation is surely something what
one would see as a special mode. It is not fundamental.

> > then the cursor should move to the next tab stop, which should be
> > every 8th column, as usual.
>
> That's not what the TAB key does usually in Emacs.

I understand, but thats what the tab key in all the other editors
does, even in ed and good ol' Wordstar. Only emacs wants to get
special treatment.

> > All the Emacs clones I tried (mg, zile, jove) work this way.
>
> It turns out that Emacs's fundamental mode used to behave in this way at
> some point in the past.  But most like those "micro emacsen" do it this
> way simply because they want to keep things simple.

And you disagree with Kiss?

> > But maybe I am too blind to see. Is there a more basic mode for Emacs
> > than "fundamental"?
>
> I told you there's paragraph-indent-text-mode which may fit your bill.
> Otherwise (setq-default indent-fill-function 'indent-to-left-margin) is
> another way to get what you want (by reverting to the older behavior,
> which is also probably the one still used in XEmacs).

The paragraph-indent-text-mode seems to be more close to what I need.
Setting the (undocumented?) indent-fill-function did not work.


Regards

Harri