Tabs in VI

[John P. Nelson]

In article <832 at stride.Stride.COM> mitch at 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

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