;I'm not sure how much elisp people know...
;I'd rather over-explain than leave you confused.

;;; *.txt uses paragraph indent text
;;; You don't have to have this for the rest of the elisp to work
;;; this should be one line...
(setq auto-mode-alist (cons '("\\.txt\\'" . paragraph-indent-text-mode) auto-mode-alist))

;;; tell text modes to use reasonable tabs
;;; all of this goes together in your .emacs

(setq-default text-mode-hook 'fix-text-mode)
(setq-default paragraph-indent-text-mode-hook 'fix-text-mode)

;;;in pre EMACS 20 days, text-mode-hook usually contained auto-fill-mode
;;;still want to do that
(defun fix-text-mode () "fix tab & set auto-fill" (interactive)
(auto-fill-mode 1)
(fix-tab)
)

(defun fix-tab () "fixes tab handling" (interactive)
; (global-set-key "\^I" 'tab-to-tab-stop)
(local-set-key "\^I" 'tab-to-tab-stop)
)

;Willard
;Captain Willard
;Commander, FSLF CompDiv