Re: Customizing tab stops

[Lowell Gilbert]

kj <socyl@987jk.com.invalid> writes:

> In a Fundamental-mode buffer, inserting a tab causes the cursor to
> jump to the next tab stop.  By default these tab stops are at
> positions 8, 16, 24, etc.  I would like to customize these spacings
> for a particular buffer.
>
> I thought that the variable tab-stop-list would do the trick.  So
> I made it local to the buffer, and used the command edit-tab-stops
> to edit its value.  Originally its value was the default
>
> (8 16 24 32 40 48 56 64 72 80 88 96 104 112 120)
>
> and I changed it to
>
> (16 27 58 68)
>
> ...but the display of the buffer was not affected; i.e. the
> tab-separated fields in the buffer remained at the default tab
> stops.
>
> I realize that the customized local value of tab-stop-list does
> affect the behavior of the tab-to-tab-stop command in this buffer,
> but this is not what I'm interested in.  I want to affect how Emacs
> *displays* the text that follows a tab.
>
> Is there a way to customize such display? 

The tab key doesn't run tab-to-tab-stop in fundamental mode, unless you
configure it to do so.  It sounds to me like that's what you want to
do.  I think global-set-key might be the best way to do this for
fundamental-mode, although I wonder if fundamental-mode is really what
you want for whatever you're really trying to do...