Manual indentation in LaTeX mode

Question

I'm new to Emacs, and dislike the default indentation in LaTeX mode. I want the indentation to do the following:

• insert a \t character (not spaces)
• be completely manual (I want to have to press Tab on each line to indent, rather than to have Emacs automatically make it match the previous line)
• display the \t characters as 4 spaces.

Essentially, I want Emacs to behave the same way as MS Notepad, XFCE's Mousepad or Vim do by default with respect to indentation (after setting \t to be displayed as 4 spaces).

I got close to this result by using the following .emacs file (taken from this q/a):

(add-hook 'LaTeX-mode-hook
      (lambda ()
        (setq indent-tabs-mode t
              indent-line-function 'indent-relative)))

But it causes the following (strange) problem: if I type something like

\begin{thm}[Liouville 1851]

followed by pressing Return and Tab, it indents all the way to the "1" in "1851". I suspect this has something to do with the 'indent-relative, but I am not sure how to fix it.

Do anyone know how I can make Emacs indentation work this way, without having the above problem? Any help is highly appreciated.

-Aleks

Answer 1

That's exactly what indent-relative does. I think what you want instead is tab-to-tab-stop. You'll also need your tab stops set to 4 spaces for this:

(add-hook 'LaTeX-mode-hook
      (lambda ()
        (setq indent-tabs-mode t
              indent-line-function 'tab-to-tab-stop
              tab-width 4)))

If you're still getting automatic indentation, make sure you have turned off electric-indent-mode. You can add that to the hook as:

(add-hook 'LaTeX-mode-hook
      (lambda ()
        (setq indent-tabs-mode t
              indent-line-function 'tab-to-tab-stop
              tab-width 4
              electric-indent-mode nil)))