Set 4 Space Indent in Emacs in Text Mode

Question

I\'ve been unsuccessful in getting Emacs to switch from 8 space tabs to 4 space tabs when pressing the TAB in buffers with the major mode text-mode.

Answer 1

(setq-default tab-width 4)
(setq-default indent-tabs-mode nil)

Answer 2

(defun my-custom-settings-fn ()
  (setq indent-tabs-mode t)
  (setq tab-stop-list (number-sequence 2 200 2))
  (setq tab-width 2)
  (setq indent-line-function 'insert-tab))

(add-hook 'text-mode-hook 'my-custom-settings-fn)

Answer 3

(setq-default indent-tabs-mode nil)
(setq-default tab-width 4)
(setq indent-line-function 'insert-tab)
(setq c-default-style "linux") 
(setq c-basic-offset 4) 
(c-set-offset 'comment-intro 0)

this works for C++ code and the comment inside too

Answer 4

Customizations can shadow (setq tab width 4) so either use setq-default or let Customize know what you're doing. I also had issues similar to the OP and fixed it with this alone, did not need to adjust tab-stop-list or any insert functions:

(custom-set-variables
 '(tab-width 4 't)
 )

Found it useful to add this immediately after (a tip from emacsWiki):

(defvaralias 'c-basic-offset 'tab-width)
(defvaralias 'cperl-indent-level 'tab-width)

Answer 5

You can add these lines of code to your .emacs file. It adds a hook for text mode to use insert-tab instead of indent-relative.

(custom-set-variables
 '(indent-line-function 'insert-tab)
 '(indent-tabs-mode t)
 '(tab-width 4))
(add-hook 'text-mode-hook
      (lambda() (setq indent-line-function 'insert-tab)))

I hope it helps.

Answer 6

Update: Since Emacs 24.4:

tab-stop-list is now implicitly extended to infinity. Its default value is changed to nil which means a tab stop every tab-width columns.

which means that there's no longer any need to be setting tab-stop-list in the way shown below, as you can keep it set to nil.

Original answer follows...

---

It always pains me slightly seeing things like (setq tab-stop-list 4 8 12 ................) when the number-sequence function is sitting there waiting to be used.

(setq tab-stop-list (number-sequence 4 200 4))

or

(defun my-generate-tab-stops (&optional width max)
  "Return a sequence suitable for `tab-stop-list'."
  (let* ((max-column (or max 200))
         (tab-width (or width tab-width))
         (count (/ max-column tab-width)))
    (number-sequence tab-width (* tab-width count) tab-width)))

(setq tab-width 4)
(setq tab-stop-list (my-generate-tab-stops))