Xref: utzoo comp.unix.questions:8223 comp.bugs.misc:138 Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ames!mailrus!husc6!panda!teddy!jpn From: jpn@teddy.UUCP (John P. Nelson) Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions,comp.bugs.misc Subject: Re: Tabs in VI Message-ID: <4893@teddy.UUCP> Date: 14 Jul 88 16:06:08 GMT References: <399@cb.ecn.purdue.edu> <177@skep2.ATT.COM> <4885@teddy.UUCP> <190@skep2.ATT.COM> <832@stride.Stride.COM> Reply-To: jpn@teddy.UUCP (John P. Nelson) Organization: GenRad, Inc., Concord, Mass. Lines: 22 In article <832@stride.Stride.COM> mitch@stride.com (Thomas Mitchell) writes: >>} :set tabstop=8. After setting the tabstop to zero, tabs are 8 long, > >One thing I found was that for many terminals the command to clear >the tabs in termcap and terminfo was missing or wrong. While this may be true, it has absolutely nothing to do with the :set tabstop command in vi. This command does not attempt to change the terminal's idea of the tabs: It assumes that the terminal ALWAYS has 8 char tabs (or no tabs at all, if the tty mode is set appropriately). All it does is change the way that vi DISPLAYS tab characters. There IS a vi variable called "hardtabs", which tells vi that the terminal has tabstops other than every 8 characters. This is usually never used, because most OTHER programs don't understand the change in tab width. This option is advisory, though: Vi NEVER attempts to change the tab settings on a terminal, -- john nelson UUCP: {decvax,mit-eddie}!genrad!teddy!jpn smail: jpn@genrad.com