Re: outline-minor-mode heading levels in C, C++, and html

[Joel Reicher <joel.reicher@gmail.com>]

Stefan Monnier via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor 
<help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org> writes:

>> This is common, but not universal, and is not part of elisp.
>
> That depends whether you consider
>
>     @section Tips on Writing Comments
>
> to be part of the "definition" of ELisp.

It would depend on what you take to be a language's definition, of 
course, but I don't want to be philosophical.

I think many people take a language to be defined by the behaviour 
of the tooling for that language, although this understanding 
would probably vary according to experience, mindset, and 
hairstyle.

For a programming language the syntax would be determined by the 
compiler/interpreter, and the semantics by the runtime behaviour.

That's why I think it's useful to regard this commenting 
idiom/convention as not part of elisp, because, as far as I know, 
it's not "comprehended" by the runtime tooling.

It is, however, comprehended by the outline-regexp value set in 
lisp-mode, so I think it might make sense to talk about this as 
lisp-mode's comment syntax, because although a major mode is 
usually regarded as supporting a language rather than defining 
one, the major mode in this case is the tooling that determines 
the behaviour.

Cheers,

        - Joel