Emacs + js2-mode: disable indenting completely?

Question

I'm using js2-mode for working with javascript in emacs and for the most part it's very useful. However, the indenting methods are terribly frustrating when working with jQuery, closures, and JSON... for instance, code that I wish to be indented like this:

var foo = jQuery('#mycontainer ul li').each(function(el){
    var bar = el.html();
});

Turns out as:

var foo = jQuery('#mycontainer ul li').each(function(el){
                                          var bar = el.html();
                                       });

Is there a way I can just switch off all the indenting "helpers" and just have emacs insert N spaces when I hit the tab key? I know manual-indentation is a step backwards, but having readable code is, IMHO, more useful than a tool that doesn't work as expected.

Answer 1

You can simply bind TAB to insert itself:

(add-hook 'js2-mode-hook 'my-js2-mode-hook)
(defun my-js2-mode-hook ()
  (define-key js2-mode-map [tab] 'self-insert-command))

(But the better solution would, of course, be to find out why the mode thinks it needs so much indentation for anonymous functions, and fix it.)

Answer 2

js2-mode supports "bounce" indenting; you can press tab multiple times to choose different likely indenting levels, so you might be able to get the effect you want that way:

(setq js2-bounce-indent-p t)

Answer 3

I guess I will make this a full answer instead of a comment; espresso-mode is included with Emacs, and is designed to be a Javascript mode for Emacs (instead of a Javascript mode that happens to run inside of Emacs). It works like regular programming modes, and also happens to indent things the way you like.

Answer 4

Have you tried new versions of js2-mode? It looks like there's a fix out: http://code.google.com/p/js2-mode/issues/detail?id=94

Answer 5

Check out this solution, maps indentation function in js2-mode to partially use indentation from esresso-mode (now known as js-mode included in emacs 23.2 and newer):

http://mihai.bazon.net/projects/editing-javascript-with-emacs-js2-mode

Works exactly as I expect indentation in emacs to work and you still get the parsing awesomeness from js2-mode.