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

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>]

> 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 of course understand why it would override them, but not why it would set
major-mode to `latex-mode' rather than to `LaTeX-mode'.

In my opinion, LaTeX-mode is the AUCTeX major mode, while latex-mode can be
either, depending on the user's preference.

> 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.

I'll very much vote in favor of switching it 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.

Indeed, as shown in my sample auctex-override.el you just have to explicitly
fmakunbound them before setting up the autoload.  No biggie, tho.

> 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.

Doesn't make any significant difference.  People still want perl-mode
cookies to use cperl-mode, just not as often.  They also want the default
auto-mode-alist to use cperl-mode (even tho it links .perl to perl-mode), so
people typically do (defalias 'perl-mode 'cperl-mode).

The real difference is that perl-modes have only one entry point
(i.e. `perl-mode') whereas TeX modes have tex-mode, latex-mode, ...
so instead of a single defalias, you have to setup a separate file,
which I called auctex-override.el.

> 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.

I was just answering your own question about the current insanity of your
solution.  I'm not particularly concerned about AUCTeX, tho I am interested
in coming up with a plan for what a clean solution would look like and what
is currently missing in Emacs to get that solution working.  I think my
suggestion of auctex-override is a solution which can be made clean (with
some bugfixing in Emacs), so I'm satisfied and will try to fix the
corresponding problems.  The fact that my solution can also be made to work
right now, using some ugly workarounds is not that interesting to me, I just
thought you might like to try it.


        Stefan