Difficulty opening a particular file

Difficulty opening a particular file

[Haines Brown]

I have no trouble having find file open .basrc, but to open .balance.bal
consistently must be done twice, and trying to do it with a bookmark
hangs emacs permanently. The problem seems to be in emacs
configuration.

This emacs uses as its configuration a ~/.emacs file. However, this file
add-to-list load-library ~/.emacs.d/elist/basic.el where configuration
for this particular emacs session is located. In that file there is a
stanza:

  (autoload 'balance-mode "balance")
    (setq auto-mode-alist
     (append '(("\\.bal$" . balance-mode)) auto-mode-alist))

This work earlier this year, but for some reason not now. If I open 
balance.bal manually rather than by bookmark the balance mode works
properly.  

Re: Difficulty opening a particular file

[Pascal J. Bourguignon]

Haines Brown <haines@engels.histomat.net> writes:

> I have no trouble having find file open .basrc, but to open .balance.bal
> consistently must be done twice, and trying to do it with a bookmark
> hangs emacs permanently. The problem seems to be in emacs
> configuration.
>
> This emacs uses as its configuration a ~/.emacs file. However, this file
> add-to-list load-library ~/.emacs.d/elist/basic.el where configuration
> for this particular emacs session is located. In that file there is a
> stanza:
>
>   (autoload 'balance-mode "balance")
>     (setq auto-mode-alist
>      (append '(("\\.bal$" . balance-mode)) auto-mode-alist))
>
> This work earlier this year, but for some reason not now. If I open 
> balance.bal manually rather than by bookmark the balance mode works
> properly.  

Perhaps you are missing the balance-mode?
Try: C-h f balance-mode RET 

-- 
__Pascal Bourguignon__                 http://www.informatimago.com/
“The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a
dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to
keep the man from touching the equipment.” -- Carl Bass CEO Autodesk

Re: Difficulty opening a particular file

[Stefan Monnier]

>      (append '(("\\.bal$" . balance-mode)) auto-mode-alist))
                         ^
Should be               \\'


        Stefan

Re: Difficulty opening a particular file

[Haines Brown]

On Fri, Jul 17, 2015 at 03:20:29PM +0200, Pascal J. Bourguignon wrote:
> Haines Brown <haines@engels.histomat.net> writes:
> 
> > I have no trouble having find file open .basrc, but to open .balance.bal
> > consistently must be done twice, and trying to do it with a bookmark
> > hangs emacs permanently. The problem seems to be in emacs
> > configuration.

> Perhaps you are missing the balance-mode?
> Try: C-h f balance-mode RET 

Don't think so. When I open the .balance.bal file in emacs, it move into
the balance mode.

Re: Difficulty opening a particular file

[Haines Brown]

On Fri, Jul 17, 2015 at 09:25:46AM -0400, Stefan Monnier wrote:
> >      (append '(("\\.bal$" . balance-mode)) auto-mode-alist))
>                          ^
> Should be               \\'

Thanks, but doing that had no effect. Opening ~/.balance.bal still
requires repeating the C-x C-f command, and trying it as a bookmark
still hangs emacs.

But what is interesting is that if I comment the stanza and restart
emacs and then open .balance.bal with the duplicate command, emacs puts
itself into the balance-mode. So the stanza appears to be superfluous.

If I comment the stanza, the problem persists. If I start emacs with no
configuration, there is no problem opening ~.balance.bal but emacs is
not put into the balance mode. I don't understand how emacs knows to
move to the balance mode when a .bal file is opened without the stanza.