From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: "J K" Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: .emacs - minor mode behavior Date: 13 Feb 2007 13:54:53 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: <1171403693.631853.279610@m58g2000cwm.googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1171406448 2367 80.91.229.12 (13 Feb 2007 22:40:48 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2007 22:40:48 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Tue Feb 13 23:40:38 2007 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1HH6K6-0006RF-MJ for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Tue, 13 Feb 2007 23:40:30 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1HH6K6-000302-5q for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Tue, 13 Feb 2007 17:40:30 -0500 Original-Path: shelby.stanford.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!postnews.google.com!m58g2000cwm.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help Original-Lines: 36 Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 192.85.50.2 Original-X-Trace: posting.google.com 1171403711 17163 127.0.0.1 (13 Feb 2007 21:55:11 GMT) Original-X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Original-NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2007 21:55:11 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.1) Gecko/20061204 Firefox/2.0.0.1,gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: m58g2000cwm.googlegroups.com; posting-host=192.85.50.2; posting-account=Cq8o4g0AAABHfzjAD1lHzIzqbyxrou1N Original-Xref: shelby.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:145572 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:41178 Archived-At: I'm just learning Emacs and have recently started working on a .emacs file for myself. I was hoping someone could answer what I think is probably a simple question: During customization of the mode line, I was able to turn on column- number-mode with the following line in .emacs: (setq column-number-mode t) I understand that this line is setting 'column-number-mode to t (true). I also understand that this variable is created along with the column-number-mode function by the define-minor-mode macro in simple.el. I then proceeded to attempt to add the time to the mode line with the line: (setq display-time-mode t) This doesn't work. I have seen that you can instead call the function with a positive argument like so: (display-time-mode 1) But I don't understand why the first method doesn't work. I think the problem is that I don't know how emacs goes from variables being set to t/nil to actually drawing the screen, but I was hoping to avoid digging that deep as I still am learning. Could someone please help me to understand? Also - I've read quite a few posts in this group, and it seems like most folks lean toward using customize as opposed to hand editing .emacs. Am I making things harder on myself? Thanks for the information.