Re: org-adapt-indentation not honored prior to Org 9.4?

[Kyle Meyer <kyle@kyleam.com>]

Mike Kupfer writes:

> Over the weekend I upgraded my Emacs from 27.1 (Org 9.3) to 27.2-rc2
> (Org 9.4).  I noticed that Org mode behaves differently, even with
> "emacs -Q".
>
> In 27.1, if I visit foo.org and type "* header RET", point is put in the
> first column.  In 27.2, point is put in column 3.
>
> AFAIK, I'm not using electric-indent-mode; at least it's not shown in
> the minor mode list in the modeline.

electric-indent-mode has been enabled by default since Emacs 24.  If you
run `C-h v electric-indent-mode` under emacs -Q, you should see that its
value is t.

> org-adapt-indentation is t in both Emacs 27.1 and Emacs 27.2.  Was there
> a bug fix that went into Org 9.4 such that org-adapt-indentation is now
> honored?

Not that I'm aware of.  However, Org was changed to respect the
electric-indent-mode value: d3e6b5800 (Make RET and C-j obey
`electric-indent-mode', 2020-05-05)

https://orgmode.org/list/877dxpazbo.fsf_-_@gmail.com/T/#u

> Could the change in behavior be documented in the ORG-NEWS
> file in Emacs?

Here's what ORG-NEWS says under the 9.4 release:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
*** =RET= and =C-j= now obey ~electric-indent-mode~

Since Emacs 24.4, ~electric-indent-mode~ is enabled by default.  In
most major modes, this causes =RET= to reindent the current line and
indent the new line, and =C-j= to insert a newline without indenting.

Org mode now obeys this minor mode: when ~electric-indent-mode~ is
enabled, and point is neither in a table nor on a timestamp or a link:

- =RET= (bound to ~org-return~) reindents the current line and indents
  the new line;
- =C-j= (bound to the new command ~org-return-and-maybe-indent~)
  merely inserts a newline.

To get the previous behaviour back, disable ~electric-indent-mode~
explicitly:

#+begin_src emacs-lisp
(add-hook 'org-mode-hook (lambda () (electric-indent-local-mode -1)))
#+end_src

Alternatively, if you wish to keep =RET= as the "smart-return" key,
but dislike Org's default indentation of sections, you may prefer to
customize ~org-adapt-indentation~ to either =nil= or ='headline-data=.
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---