[Geany] tuning Geany key combos

[John Gabriele]

On 6/27/07, Enrico Tröger <enrico.troeger at uvena.de> wrote:
> On Tue, 26 Jun 2007 13:21:02 -0500, "Jeff Pohlmeyer"
> <yetanothergeek at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > [snip]
> >
> > 1)
> > The ability to "force" a tab character, even when using spaces to
> > indent:
> >
> > Most of the C code I work with uses spaces for indentation, but what
> > if I have a bunch of C files open and then I want to tweak the
> > Makefile a bit? I have to go into preferences, enable "use tabs" ,
> > insert the tab char, and then go back into preferences and turn tabs
> > off again. I would prefer that Ctrl+I and Ctrl+Shift+I could be used
> > for normal indentation, and that the tab key would *always* insert a
> > tab char, regardless of the preferences.
>
> Yes, we need a solution for this. The easiest way would be to always
> indent by tab in Makefiles. But it won't help if you are editing any
> other file and currently need a "real" tab. Any ideas on best way to
> solve?

My understanding is that, for users like me who use only spaces (no
tabs) all the time, we've got the following settings set:

1. Prefs --> Files tab --> Saving Files --> "replace tabs by space" checked
2. Prefs --> Editor tab --> Features --> "use tabs when inserting
whitespace" un-checked.

So, due to that first one, even you Geany provides a secret ninja key
combo to insert an actual tab character, as soon as I save the file,
it'll be converted to *n* spaces (where I've got *n* set to 4).

My impression is that the Document menu is supposed to have
document-specific (as opposed to app-specific) settings that you can
set for just this document (the one who's tab is selected). It makes
sense that any settings you adjust here should override more general
settings made in the Preferences dialog.

So, I think you need 2 things to remedy the situation:

1. Provide a "Document --> Allow tab characters" menu time that
overrides the "replace tabs by space" behaviour just for this
document.

2. Provide a key combo to insert an actual tab character. I'd probably
use a punctuation mark for this, since it doesn't get used very often
anyway. Probably Ctrl-_ , Ctrl-% , or Ctrl-: .

---John