Re: Setting up user defined texinfo headlines using outline-heading-alist

[Yuri Khan <yuri.v.khan@gmail.com>]

On Thu, 13 May 2021 at 19:46, Christopher Dimech <dimech@gmx.com> wrote:

[…]

Ha! Much better.

> Have modified my init file with the following code that resets "outline-heading-alist"
> to include @usec, @usebsec as headings in addition to @unnumbered
>
> (defvar texinfo-hdlevels […])
>
> (setq-local outline-heading-alist texinfo-hdlevels)

If that’s all that you have in your init file, then the setq-local
acts on the wrong buffer. It sets the local value of the variable
‘outline-heading-alist’ in whichever buffer that is current at the
time your init file is executed, maybe *scratch* or something. But you
actually want it to act on the buffer that visits your test.texi file.

To that end, put that setq-local in a hook that runs when you visit a
.texi file:

(defun my-texinfo-outline ()
  (setq-local outline-heading-alist texinfo-hdlevels))

(add-hook 'texinfo-mode-hook #'my-texinfo-outline)

This is a recurring pattern in Emacs configuration: If you have a
general facility that works in various buffers regardless of their
major mode, and you want it to behave differently depending on the
major mode, you put configuration in a hook that is run by that major
mode.