On 7 Feb 2006, at 00:16, Allan Odgaard wrote:
If you just want it to insert four spaces, start macro recording, press space 4 times, stop macro recording, save macro and bind to the tab key. Then use it with soft tabs disabled.
No, I'd like the current soft tabs behaviour where hitting tab inserts spaces up to the next tab stop - but without cursor movements pretending that runs of spaces are actually tabs. I'd like to be able to tell from how the cursor moves whether the file contains a real tab or not.
Although then tab can no longer be used to expand snippets (snippet expansion can however also be rebind).
For a more complex version, it'd have to be a command and use TM_TABZIE and likely TM_COLUMN_NUMBER.
But why do you want this? if it's to see when it's using tabs or spaces, you can enable Show Invisibles in the View menu.
I don't like being able to see invisible characters but I do like the cursor movement to reflect what's in the text. For example I find it annoying not to be able to place the cursor in the middle of a 'virtual' tab and start typing.
Force of habit I guess :)