Primitive indentation in Emacs

4
votes

Is there a simple primitive indentation mode for Emacs that would do the following:

  1. When I go to new line (Hit Enter), copy whatever white space used for indentation for above line

  2. When I press Tab, insert indentation character(s) that can be configured (spaces/tabs) right there where I pressed Tab. Just insert spaces/tab, DO NOT DO "smart"-indentation.

  3. [optionally] When I press Shift+Tab, remove one indentation character from the beginning of the current line

  4. [optionally] Do indent/unindent selected blocks.

The question is: Does a mode like this exist? If, what is the name of it?

I don't want to start discussion on "Why do I need this behavior?" and I do not need "smart" alternatives for reasons beyond this topic.

I just want a plain stupid mode...

Emacs has been there for ages. Someone somewhere at some point of time must have asked this question and probably written a mode for it.

I went through lots of "indentation-related" topics... nothing there. Everyone just insists on "you should obey Emacs, not Emacs should obey you".

2
emacsindentation
hmm.. by default emacs should do your 1 and 2 - kindahero
@Patrick OP request is "indent when press tab" not the auto indentation. so emacs by default doesn't indent by pressing RET - kindahero
@kindahero: Oh wait, I misread. I withdraw my previous comments. - Patrick
@kindahero, not exactly. It indents with spaces regardless of what was used on previous line. And Tab inserts spaces too.. - TEHEK

2 Answers

4
votes

There you go, I just wrote it: https://gist.github.com/mishoo/5487564

2
votes

1. While in fundamental-mode, you could rebind RET to newline-and-indent

(local-set-key (kbd "RET") 'newline-and-indent)

2. To make TAB insert tabulation/spaces instead of indenting, you should customize the tab-always-indent variable :

(setq tab-always-indent nil)

To choose between tab and space indentation, customize the indent-tabs-mode variable.

(setq indent-tabs-mode t)   ;; for tab-based indentation
(setq indent-tabs-mode nil) ;; for space-based indentation

I don't know of any standard way of doing points 3. and 4., but it should not be too difficult to develop small custom functions to do this.