Disable Emacs' auto indentation for JavaScript mode completely

Question

I have tried to disable the auto indentation in Emacs in JavaScript for three hours now and could not find a (good) solution.

My Emacs version is 23.3.1 (i486-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 2.24.3), at least it says that. It is a standard package from Debian Linux (Wheezy), the GUI one.

I found emacs javascript auto indentation (and others), but did not want to install another mode just for removing auto indentation (and there's no garantuee it would work with it), the fundamental mode disables syntax highlighting as well, which I want to keep, C-c C-l does nothing, setting javascript-auto-indent-flag to nil does nothing.

What I want exactly: Insert a tab if and only if I press the TAB key. The "if" part works, but the "only if" part does not. I wonder why it's so hard?

Answer 1

You say you do not want TAB's unless you pressed the TAB key. Does that mean you are happy with the indentation but want lines to be indented using spaces rather than TAB's? Or do you not want any indentation at all?

Answer 2

In Emacs' Javascript mode, the character } is bound to function js-insert-and-indent. You can bind it to just insert itself by putting this code into your .emacs startup file:

(defun my-js-mode-hook ()
  "My personal Javascript mode hook."
  (local-set-key (kbd "TAB") 'tab-to-tab-stop)
  (local-set-key (kbd "RET") '(lambda () (interactive) (newline 1)))
  (local-set-key (kbd "SPC") 'self-insert)
  (local-set-key (kbd "}") 'self-insert))

(add-hook 'js-mode-hook 'my-js-mode-hook)

and restarting Emacs. If you find other characters like that, you can add more calls to local-set-key in your hook function, each with a different character passed to the kbd function.