Re: Fwd: Patch for sgml-mode.el

[Martin Pohlack <mp26@os.inf.tu-dresden.de>]

Stefan Monnier wrote:
>> sgml-mode.el currently contains such lines:
> 
>> (define-derived-mode sgml-mode text-mode '(sgml-xml-mode "XML" "SGML")
> 
>> and
> 
>> (define-derived-mode html-mode sgml-mode '(sgml-xml-mode "XHTML" "HTML")
>> .
> 
>> This violates that the third argument of define-derived-mode shall be a
>> string.  Furthermore, it results in "mode-name" not being a string for
>> html buffers.
> 
> I don't see a problem with that.  It's obviously been done on purpose.

Well, this was not obvious to me ...

> Please describe where it causes a problem so we can fix that spot.

Most obviously: the documentation for "define-derived-mode" states:

  (define-derived-mode child parent name &optional docstring &rest body)

  ...

  name: a string which will appear in the status line (e.g. "Hypertext")

So name should be a string.

Second, I could not find the documentation for the varibale mode-name in
emacs, but in xemacs it is documented as:

  Pretty name of current buffer's major mode (a string).

Third, I have a buffer-switching module here locally, which relies on
mode-name being a string.

  http://os.inf.tu-dresden.de/~mp26/download/cycbuf.el

Could you advice another way to get the mode-name as a string for a
buffer apart from accessing mode-name?  Maybe this could be documented?

Cheers,
Martin