org-mode setting to preserve spacing in SRC code, with verbatim latex output to pdf

Question

Like this post, when I indent within a SRC code block in org-mode, 8 consecutive spaces are converted to a tab. Moreover, when I export to LaTeX 8 consecutive spaces are converted to tabs in the resultant .tex output. This is a problem as my LaTeX (pdflatex / xelatex) convert tabs in verbatim mode to a single space. This means my source code's indentation is off. A http://tex.stackexchange.com poster was told to use fancyvrb, but that doesn't immediately solve my problem.

I want to use org-mode to write these documents, C-c ' to edit source blocks, and C-c C-e l p to turn my org-mode files into pdfs.

What options do I have to, for instance:

• make org-mode SRC blocks export as fancyvrb's Verbatim mode OR

• prevent my org-mode's indentation mechanism and my export to LaTeX from turning 8 spaces into a tab OR

• post-process the exported LaTeX and transform the tabs into 8 spaces?

And how can I make this setting the default for my org-mode? I would like not to have to include this same boilerplate in all of my org-mode files that I intend to use with it, and I would like to avoid having a special latex compilation command to have to use for the tex files I generate.

Answer 1

(setq TeX-auto-untabify 't)

Adding that to the .emacs file solves the problem wonderfully.

Answer 2

With respect to "prevent my org-mode's indentation mechanism and my export to LaTeX from turning 8 spaces into a tab", consider setting org-src-preserve-indentation to a non-NIL value. If org-src-preserve-indentation is set to NIL, org will remove leading whitespace and reindent the code block.