bind <tab> to vimpulse-abbrev-expand-before in insert mode

Fri Dec 17 17:24:11 CET 2010

Titus von der Malsburg <malsburg at gmail.com> writes:

> Dear list,
>
> I'd like to be able to expand words and symbols by pressing the tab
> key in insert mode.  I tried this method:
>
>   (vimpulse-imap [(tab)] 'vimpulse-abbrev-expand-before)
>
> But when I press tab in insert mode after evaluating this nothing
> happens.  I'm was running emacs -nw.   The strange thing is that it
> does work when I run emacs with the graphical user interface (GNU
> Emacs 23.1.1 from Ubuntu lucid).  Any ideas about what is going on
> here and how I can fix it?

You can see what is going on using `C-h c TAB', which will show you how
Emacs understands what your Tab key sends. In all terminals I know, the
Tab key sends ^I (i.e. ASCII 0x09), so you have to use something like
"\C-i" for the event you want to bind (instead of [(tab)]).

> The other problem I'm having is that C-v does not activate block
> selection but inserts text.  I'd be happy about any suggestion!

No idea. `C-v' does the right thing for me both in the terminal and the
GUI.

> Here's my init.el, not much going on there:

Indeed, nothing there suggests `C-v' shouldn't work.
Could the problem be that something other than Emacs catches the C-v
event?

  Štěpán