Re: new nvi option: expandtab

[Alan Barrett <apb%cequrux.com@localhost>]

On Wed, 10 Dec 2008, Luke Mewburn wrote:
> I've been experimenting with a new option to nvi:
>        expandtab, et [off]

Yes please!

> Currently, my modification doesn't alter the behaviour of <tab>
> in insert mode; it still inserts \t.  Changing this is a fair bit
> trickier;  I don't use <tab> anyway, since I have shiftwidth
> set to a different value to tabstop.

I think it would be more useful if <tab> inserted the correct number of
spaces to get to the next multiple of tabstop columns, but the feature
is useful even without that.

> (I originally called it "expandtabs", then noticed that vim(1)
> has an "expandtab" option that sets similar behaviour.)

"expandtabs" or "tabexpand" would be better names than "expandtab", but
compatibility with other implementations trumps that.

--apb (Alan Barrett)