This section explains the mechanism for user-specified tab stops and the mechanisms that use and set them. The name “tab stops” is used because the feature is similar to that of the tab stops on a typewriter. The feature works by inserting an appropriate number of spaces and tab characters to reach the next tab stop column; it does not affect the display of tab characters in the buffer (see Usual Display Conventions). Note that the TAB character as input uses this tab stop feature only in a few major modes, such as Text mode. See Tab Stops in The GNU Emacs Manual.
tab-to-tab-stop
¶This command inserts spaces or tabs before point, up to the next tab
stop column defined by tab-stop-list
.
This variable defines the tab stop columns used by tab-to-tab-stop
.
It should be either nil
, or a list of increasing integers,
which need not be evenly spaced. The list is implicitly
extended to infinity through repetition of the interval between the
last and penultimate elements (or tab-width
if the list has
fewer than two elements). A value of nil
means a tab stop
every tab-width
columns.
Use M-x edit-tab-stops to edit the location of tab stops interactively.