Evil mode breaks TAB keybind in OrgMode on Emacs 28

[n-hebert]

Issue type

• Bug report

Environment

Emacs version: 28.1 Operating System: Arch Linux Evil version: 1.14.0 Evil installation type: MELPA Graphical/Terminal: Graphical Tested in a make emacs session (see CONTRIBUTING.md): yes

Reproduction steps

• make emacs
• Open any Org mode file (or create a new file ending in ".org", add a few heading lines that begin with * and have some text on and under them -- see example at the bottom)
• Hit Tab

Expected behavior

org-cycle function is toggled, headings collapse and open as they are supposed to

Actual behavior

Nothing seems to happens. The describe-key function says TAB is bound to evil-jump-forward, instead of what it usually is (a large block of text from org.el)

As of Emacs 27.1, the same reproduction steps do not reproduce the bug. Tab still does org-cycle, as expected.

Further notes

Disabling evil-mode is an immediate fix

Just running M-x evil-mode makes the issue go away, so the problem is a conflict with evil.

Reinstall has an error

When I package-reinstall evil from my regular session (outside of make, with config), I see an error of the following:

Compiling file /home/nicholas/.emacs.d/elpa/evil-1.14.0/evil-ex.el at Sat Apr 16 12:55:17 2022
evil-ex.el:596:1: Error: Wrong number of arguments: (3 . 4), 2

Perhaps this is mucking something up?

Sample org file

Just copy these contents into sample.org, if you aren't a big OrgMode user

* Hello
** Subheading one
   I have text here
** Subheading two
   Me too
*** Third level heading
   Final text

[n-hebert]

Workaround

Add this to your .emacs config:

(with-eval-after-load 'evil-maps (define-key evil-motion-state-map (kbd "TAB") nil))

Thank you @wasamasa at https://github.com/wasamasa/dotemacs/blob/master/init.org#keymap-hacking!

[deen1]

Add this to your .emacs config:

(with-eval-after-load 'evil-maps (define-key evil-motion-state-map (kbd "TAB") nil))

Unfortunately this does not work for me - e.g. I cannot jump through org-mode tables in Emacs 28 using TAB. Is there any other kind of workaround?

[wasamasa]

No, it works perfectly fine:

cd ~/git/emacs-evil && make emacs
# press n to skip tests
# M-: (with-eval-after-load 'evil-maps (define-key evil-motion-state-map (kbd "TAB") nil))
# switch to an org buffer
# M-x org-mode
# F1 k TAB (it shows org-cycle)

Ask yourself instead what exactly is different in your init file to cause that divergence.

[deen1]

Ah, thanks! After finding that the TAB key being bound to outline-cycle rather than org-cycle, I did some digging around for a while and found the outline-magic package somewhere in my config file. In particular,

(define-key outline-minor-mode-map (kbd "<C-tab>") 'outline-cycle)

was in the use-package config, and I'm guessing this might conflict with your fix, evil , org-mode and whatever happens in Emacs 28. (This all seemed to work fine in 27.2, FWIW).

In fact, removing your fix as well as outline-magic gives me the desired normal behavior (jumping between table cells, <s TAB creating source blocks), so it's probably outline-magic that was the cause of my problems. After removing both, TAB is bound to

(evil-jump-forward &optional COUNT)

when in NORMAL mode, and (org-cycle &optional ARG) when in INSERT mode, according to C-h k TAB.

Hope this helps whoever else comes across this problem.

Thanks for your fix, and for looking into my response.

[wasamasa]

Closing since this is working as intended. Evil binds C-i/TAB just like Vim does and for those who don't need it, this workaround works fine.