Allow tab character to be inserted

[scott]

Add a new setting so that the tab character can actually be inserted in to rich text mode instead of X spaces. Many ways to do it such as:

FCKConfig.TabSpaces = -1; shows tab FCKConfig.TabSpaces = 0; disables tab FCKConfig.TabSpaces = 1+; shows spaces instead of tab

or add a whole new setting FCKConfig.TabShow = true; show tabs instead of spaces

Personally i do not like spaces, i prefer tabs since i have much more flexibility over them server side than spaces. Also when pasting source code i can delete a tab with one key press, not several. Copying code from the editor in to my IDE deals much better with tabs than spaces.

The only way to edit this setting at the moment is to edit the compressed source (not a good idea): ​http://www.fckeditor.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=12443

Could you please add support for this?

Kind regards, Scott

[Mike Gifford]

Is this still an issue in the latest version of CKEditor?

[Jakub Ś]

Unfortunately it is.

Currently it is only possible to insert spaces (no tabs) ​http://docs.ckeditor.com/#!/api/CKEDITOR.config-cfg-tabSpaces.

[Rainer Åhlfors]

8 years, and this is still an issue.

Pressing tab should also be intelligent. Inside a paragraph, it should trigger adding the text-indent CSS property. Inside a list item it should increase indentation, etc.

[Jakub Ś]

@GalaGalaxia since TAB character has no visual representation in HTML, you are completely right with your intelligent approach here.

We already have indent plugin so we could perhaps add key handler to that plugin so that it does the same as the button. At the moment it is possible to indent list elements with tab key but it is not possible to indent whole list when pressing tab in first list item (indent button works that way). It is also not possible to indent paragraphs or divs that way.
Such functionality would need to be enabled with configuration option because not every one may want such behaviour and spaces might be ok for them.

Sadly although interesting we don't consider this issue critical or important at the moment thus we won't be working on it in the nearest future. I'm sorry.