Indentation engines determine the formatting of text that is generated or typed in the Source Editor.
There are different indentation engines for different editor types. You can modify the properties of the indentation engines in the Options window.
To set indentation properties for an editor type, choose Tools > Options and click Advanced Options. In the left pane, expand Editing > Indentation Engines and select the indentation engine for the editor type.
The Simple Indentation Engine is used for file types that do not have their own indentation engine.
The following are properties for the indentation engines. Some indentation engines only have the Expand Tabs to Spaces and Number of Spaces per Indent properties.
If unselected, typing the Tab key inserts the tab character (\t) into the file if possible. It also replaces preceding spaces with the tab character if possible. The Source Editor calculates where to place tab characters based on the value of the Tab Size property. The Tab Size property is found in the main properties of the Source Editor, not in the Indentation Engine settings.
If Expand Tabs to Spaces is unselected and the Number of Spaces per Tab is different than the Tab Size property, the indentation created by typing the Tab key is made up of a combination of spaces and tab characters. It is easiest to predict the location of tab characters if you set Number of Spaces per Tab to an even multiple or divisor of Tab Size.