Re: Recent attempts at standardizing major mode definitions.

[Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>]

    The second, more recent purpose is as a "standard" way to define any
    major mode whatsoever.

Stefan started using define-derived-mode for this, but I rejected the
idea.  He had already converted a few modes, and not all of them have
been changed back.

Defining a macro define-major-mode might be a good idea.

      (put 'mymode 'derived-mode-parent 'nil)

There is no need for that--nil is the default.

      (defun mymode nil "docstring\n\nThis mode runs the hook
      `mymode-hook', as the final step\nduring
      initialization.\n\n\\{mymode-map}"

We don't always want to use \\{...} in every major mode doc string.

    Major modes usually should have their own keymap...

    There is a "usually" in this sentence.  So maybe define-major-mode
    should also take a keymap argument.  This is a lot less clear than it
    is for syntax-tables and abbrev-tables however.

Would you like to look at all the major modes and see which ones don't
have keymaps?  It could be that fundamental-mode is the only one.