vim tab indentation for tex document

Question

I am trying to configure my vimrc so that tabs are 2 spaces when editing tex documents.

In my vimrc file, I have

au BufNewFile,BufRead *.py:
    \ set tabstop=4
    \ set softtabstop=4
    \ set shiftwidth=4
    \ set textwidth=79
    \ set expandtab
    \ set autoindent
    \ set fileformat=unix

au BufNewFile,BufRead *.js, *.html, *.css, *.tex:
    \ set tabstop=2
    \ set softtabstop=2
    \ set shiftwidth=2

However, when I edit a document in vim, it ignores the tabstop. Tabs are much longer than 2 spaces. Vim does not throw out any errors. I do not understand why it ignores the tabstop=2 line when I am editing a tex document. I have to run :set tabstop=2 while editing.

Can anyone see how my configuration file is wrong?

In case this is relevant, I am using the vimtex plugin.

Thank you.

Consider running :verbose set tabstop?. It'll show where the relevant option was last set, which will help debugging. — Michail

Ingo Karkat Ingo Karkat · Accepted Answer · 2019-02-26T08:15:26

The file globs need to be separated by commas without whitespace in between; cp. :help autocmd-patterns.
Drop the : colon after the pattern.
Instead of :set, better use :setlocal, otherwise the indent settings will be inherited to any new buffer that is created from within one of those.
You can combine the arguments of all :set command into one.

au BufNewFile,BufRead *.js,*.html,*.css,*.tex
    \ setlocal tabstop=2 softtabstop=2 shiftwidth=2

Instead of the :autocmd, I would prefer to put this into ~/.vim/after/ftplugin/{filetype}.vim. (This requires that you have :filetype plugin on; use of the after directory allows you to override any default filetype settings done by $VIMRUNTIME/ftplugin/{filetype}.vim.) The small downside is that you have to duplicate the :setlocal commands for every filetype, but to me, the fact that you would like to have the same indent settings for those languages is accidental, and there's no connection between those configurations.

Alternatively, you could define an :autocmd FileType {filetype} ... directly in your ~/.vimrc. With this, you at least wouldn't duplicate the built-in filetype detection and the file glob patterns used by it:

au FileType javascript,html,css,tex
    \ setlocal tabstop=2 softtabstop=2 shiftwidth=2

vim tab indentation for tex document

1 Answers