Thanks Gerald, and others - think I might settle for a) keeping expandtab enabled, b) remap <tab> to insert a real tab, ie, imap <tab> ^Q^I (^Q instead of ^V since for better and worse I use mswin.vim on windows) c) "set list" to be able to see the tab characters, thus also setting listchars like set listchars+=tab:>_
The listchars isn't hugely necessary since the syntax highlighting should point out any places I failed to tab where I should have, but it can't hurt either. Thanks again, John On Saturday 17 June 2006 05:42, Gerald Lai wrote: > On Fri, 16 Jun 2006, John Orr wrote: > > [snip] > > Another alternative might be to enable expandtab (to get the spaces) > > and enter the tab characters explicitly - is there any easy way of > > inserting a tab character when expandtab is enabled? > > Yes. In Insert mode, you could either > > (a) hit Ctrl-v followed by Tab > (b) hit Ctrl-v followed by Ctrl-i > (c) hold down Ctrl and type "vi" > > (c) is essentially (b), but has a nice ring to it ;) Entering tab > characters explicitly is what I normally do when editing makefiles, > since I have 'expandtab' set. > > See > > :help i_ctrl-v > :help i_ctrl-q > > HTH. > -- > Gerald >
