Re: enriched-mode problems

[Lute Kamstra <Lute.Kamstra.lists@xs4all.nl>]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

>     I've got the same problem with auto-fill sometimes.  I switch that
>     mode on with text-mode-hook.  When I visit a text file that has "mode:
>     auto-fill", it is effectively turned off.  Maybe we should do
>     (some-minor-mode 1) for "mode: some-minor-mode" constructs.
>
> That would be hard, since the code doesn't know whether the mode
> is a minor or major mode.

Can't you tell a major mode from a minor mode by looking at the
argument list?

> But worse than that, it is misguided.
>
> It would be a mistake to try to make this "work", since it is
> misguided ayway.  Minor modes such as auto-fill mode are personal
> choices; files should not specify them at all.

While I tend to agree with you in theory (for the case of auto-fill
mode), the problem still bites me in practice.  I don't control all
files I visit.  Other people might put "mode: auto-fill" in a file and
that will cause problems for me.  Also, it is quite clear that someone
intends to turn auto-fill on in that case.  So why not do that instead
of toggling?

> It might be useful to find a way to arrange a warning when files use
> Mode: or -*-...-*- to specify minor modes.

In general, there are examples of minor modes (Ralf and David gave an
example) for which it is useful to turn them on (or off) for a certain
file because of the _contents_ of that file.  So it would be nice to
have a mechanism to do this.

Lute.