Re: CC Mode troubles and Emacs 29

[Gregory Heytings <gregory@heytings.org>]

>
> Previously, CC Mode fontification was missing some types.  Judge for 
> yourself what is better: missing types, or randomly adding types?
>

That's the problem.  Clearly you prefer the former (all bug reports in the 
long list that Alan shared were filed by you), and others prefer the 
latter.  There is a tension between fontifying too few identifiers with a 
type face and fontifying too many identifiers with a type face.  And that 
problem cannot have an accurate solution without a parser.  (In fact, even 
a parser is not enough for that job if you want 100% accuracy.)

>> Note that this can easily be fixed with C-u C-x x f C-x x f.
>
> Or re-enabling C Mode.  Both of which are annoying things that weren't 
> necessary in Emacs 28.
>

Alan did not add a defcustom around that new feature (and rightly so, 
AFAIU), but you can also turn it off with a single short line in your init 
file:

(advice-add #'c-fontify-new-found-type :override #'ignore)

>
> It worked in Emacs 28, 27, and since before that, because it really is 
> not vital for CC Mode to proactively look for types.
>

Evidently that's your opinion and preference, and it's not what others 
prefer: they are more annoyed by type identifiers that remain unfontified 
than by occasional fontification of non-type identifiers as types.

>
> AFAIU tree-sitter has the same problem: it does not understand typedefs 
> previously encountered in a buffer
>

Yes, as I said above if you want 100% accuracy, you need more than a 
parser, you need a full compiler.

>
> In the meantime, the so-called ``fontification based on an actual 
> parser'' does not even understand traditional C code.  Last I checked, 
> it also had problems indenting the Motif WM hints structure that people 
> copy everywhere.
>

Sorry, I don't understand what you mean by this, or how it is related to 
the problem at hand.