Re: Display tables and `tabify'

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Samuel Padgett <samuel.padgett@gte.net>
> Date: 15 Apr 2001 10:29:41 -0400
> 
> > My wording was unclear; sorry.  By ``visual appearance'' I meant the
> > visual appearence of the text indentation.  In other words, `tabify'
> > preserves the display column of each non-whitespace character.  Thus,
> > the capital `T' is left at column 4, as it was before `tabify'.
> 
> Yes, if this is what `tabify' is supposed to do, then it's not a bug.
> My question then: Is this what `tabify' _should_ do?

It looks like that.  The doc string of `tabify' says:

   Convert multiple spaces in region to tabs when possible.
   A group of spaces is partially replaced by tabs
   when this can be done without changing the column they end at.

The Emacs manual says:

   There are also commands to convert tabs to spaces or vice versa,
   always preserving the columns of all nonblank text.  `M-x tabify' scans
   the region for sequences of spaces, and converts sequences of at least
   three spaces to tabs if that can be done without changing indentation.