Re: [AUCTeX] completion and indenting in the manual

[Joost Kremers]

On Thu, Jan 25, 2007 at 02:21:47PM +0100, juan mari alberdi wrote:
> It seems that what I failed to understand is that the section "5.4  
> Indenting" of the AUCTeX manual is all of it about indentation `in the  
> body of an environment'. Outside an environment that section of the manual  
> does not apply, so it seems. In fact, pressing the <TAB> key outside an  
> environment removes, if any, all previous indentation.

what ralf is trying to point out is that "indentation" does not mean
inserting blanks before a line, but rather inserting _the right amount_ of
blanks before a line. TeX and LaTeX indentation are similar to indentation
in computer language source code, in that it is considered practical to
indent code blocks by two blanks.

that means that the "normal" text of a LaTeX file is not indented
(i.e. no blanks are placed before the lines of normal text), an environment
is indented by two blanks, and each further nested environment is indented
by another two blanks.

the TAB key in LaTeX mode performs this kind of indentation. that means
that if you hit TAB on a line of normal text, it doesn't remove the
indentation, rather it puts the right amount of blanks in, which just
happens to be zero.

-- 
Joost Kremers, PhD
University of Cologne
Institute for German Language and Literature
Albertus Magnus Platz
50923 Cologne, Germany
Tel. +49 221 / 4703807