Turning on minor modes in File Variables

Turning on minor modes in File Variables

[Michael Heerdegen]

Hello

There was a plan to make minor modes always turn on if invoked
interactively without prefix arg (Subject "turning on minor modes from
hooks", 2009 in emacs-devel).  What's the current state there?

I guess there wasn't any change, `define-minor-mode' in `easy-mmode.el'
in trunk looks unchanged.


I ask because if I want to turn on a mode automatically in a file, like
this:


;; Local Variables:
;; mode: TeX-PDF
;; End:


Then the mode will actually being turned off if it was already enabled
(in my example it is already enabled because I use
`TeX-global-PDF-mode').

I think that's not what the user expects.  At least, the Info pages in
my Emacs 23.3 (Customization > Variables > File Variables > Specifying
File Variables) say

   Some "variable names" have special meanings in a local variables
list:

   * `mode' enables the specified major or minor mode.

[...]



Michael.

Re: Turning on minor modes in File Variables

[Stefan Monnier]

> There was a plan to make minor modes always turn on if invoked
> interactively without prefix arg (Subject "turning on minor modes from
> hooks", 2009 in emacs-devel).  What's the current state there?

This change has been implemented for Emacs-24, tho it only applies to
minor modes defined with define-minor-mode.

> I guess there wasn't any change, `define-minor-mode' in `easy-mmode.el'
> in trunk looks unchanged.

Look again.

> ;; Local Variables:
> ;; mode: TeX-PDF
> ;; End:

You can also do

  ;; eval: (TeX-PDF-mode 1)

which should work everywhere.  It may/will prompt, but in Emacs-24 this
has been changed so that `eval' doesn't prompt for such calls to enable
minor modes.


        Stefan