Re: [Nano-devel] Tabs To Spaces Patch?

[David L. Ramsey]

--- "Stephan T. Lavavej" <address@hidden> wrote:
>Why did nothing ever happen with the tabs to spaces patch at
>http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/nano-devel/2002-06/msg00035.html ?

It slipped through the cracks, apparently.

>Ideally, the following Metapad features would be implemented in nano:
>
>Insert Tabs As Spaces - When the tab key is pressed, insert spaces up
>to the next tab stop, instead of a tab. This is what the linked patch
>claims to do.
>
>Tabify - Transform all large enough chunks of spaces into tabs (does
>not change the appearance of the file).
>
>Untabify - Convert all tabs to spaces (does not change the appearance
>of the file).

I'm somewhat reluctant to implement these for one reason: Inserting tabs
as spaces/converting one to the other reminds me too much of the
problems I had trying to use MS-DOS Editor to create makefiles years ago
(I'd have to hex edit those makefiles to include literal tabs because
make expected tabs at the beginnings of certain lines and would fail
without them).  nano, with this added, could have the same type of
problem, especially if (un)tabifying doesn't change the appearance of
the file; in all likelihood, you'd quickly lose track of whether you
were dealing with tabs or spaces.

>Additionally, I'd really like:
>
>Smart Home - When home is pressed anywhere but at the very beginning of
>nonwhitespace characters on a line, the cursor jumps to that beginning
>(it may jump forwards or backwards, depending).  If the cursor is
>already at that position, it will jump to the true beginning of the
>line.

This certainly seems useful.  As in my other email to the list, I've
tried implementing it in this patch against current CVS:

http://pooka_regent.tripod.com/patches/nano/nanosmarthome-patch.txt

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