bug#10153: 24.0.91; behavior of TAB in text modes is different

[Chong Yidong]

With latest trunk,

0. emacs -Q
1. M-x text-mode RET
2. M-<
3. C-SPC
4. M->
5. TAB

The text which was in the region remains unaltered by the TAB.  In Emacs
23, a tab character is inserted in front of each line in the region, as
per the manual:

  In text modes, TAB inserts some combination of space and tab
  characters to advance point to the next tab stop.  If the region is
  active and spans multiple lines, it advances the first character of
  each of those lines to the next tab stop.  For the purposes of this
  command, the position of the first non-whitespace character on the
  preceding line is treated as an additional tab stop.  Thus, you can
  use TAB to "align" point with the preceding line.

It appears that when the region is active, TAB in text mode now tries to
indent to the previous line, i.e. it behaves like TAB in programming
modes.  Is this is a new intended feature?  It's certainly not
documented in NEWS.


In GNU Emacs 24.0.91.2 (x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 3.2.0)
 of 2011-11-28 on furball