Re: Removing unloaded functions from auto-mode-alist.

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

>> The whole separation has been maintained rather meticulously.  For
>
> Actually, it seems to still use lowercase for the "main" major mode
> functions (like latex-mode, ...), which I think is wrong.

I explained already why nothing else makes sense.  AUCTeX makes
extensive use of mode cookies in local variables, and those are only
obeyed in the lowercase version.  The choice of AUCTeX vs tex-mode is
a user preference and should not be embedded into files.

I am still thinking about whether to keep the current scheme which has
tex-mode as the main function and TeX-mode as an alias into it, or
switch that around.

The problem with a switch is that "autoload" will not replace aliases,
and so I can't replace the Emacs default scheme by just specifying new
autoloads.

> If you followed my auctex-override approach (where all of auctex,
> except for this auctex-override file, defines only mixed-case
> functions and variables), then it would be possible to have both
> auctex and tex-mode loaded and in use in the vary same Emacs, as is
> the case with perl-mode and cperl-mode.

You don't have the same problems with Perl as with TeX/LaTeX, namely
that the same file ending ".tex" is used for incompatible major modes
TeX and LaTeX, and so it becomes a good idea to specify the major mode
in local file variables.

Anyway, I am not interested in continuing this discussion.  AUCTeX has
to deal with aliases in existing Emacs versions, however imprudent,
anyway.  If you are concerned about or interested in how it is going
to do that, the right forum would be auctex-devel@gnu.org.

While I agree with your original assessment that the presence of those
aliases within tex-mode.el does more harm than good, we have to deal
with it anyway.  Removing them is no requirement, but just a breath of
sanity.

There is far more important work to get done in AUCTeX development
than to fuss around about such details.  As long as we don't have the
luxury of more than a single person offering to do any particular
task, there is no point in wasting that single person's time on
defending his decisions.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum