Re: Indenting with spaces rather than tabs

[Robert Thorpe]

wael-zwaiter@gmx.com writes:

> Want to indent with spaces rather than tabs and have found the command
>
> (setq-default indent-tabs-mode nil)
>
> But one can also use "M-x untabify".
>
> What should I use for my init file?  Am not so sure about using "setq"
> rather than "setq-default".

If you set indent-tabs-mode like that then it applies to things that you
edit.

But it does not apply to all of the file.  Parts of the file you don't
edit are untouched.  Now often this is what you want.  If you're working
on a project in a group then you don't really want whitespace changes.
(Though really everyone should be using the same convention for tabs).

On the other hand, untabify deals with the whole file.  It changes parts
you have never edited or viewed.

The setq-default part means that you're setting the default value for
buffers.  But modes in buffers may over-ride it with a local variable
write.  I'm not sure that you need setq-default here.

BR,
Robert Thorpe