where to define-minor-mode line-number-mode

where to define-minor-mode line-number-mode

[Stefan Monnier]

I'd like to define line-number-mode, column-number-mode and
transient-mark-mode using define-minor-mode so as to make them
more consistent with other minor modes.

I tried to do it the naive way and failed miserably: those modes
are defined in simple.el and simple.el is loaded by loadup.el
before loaddefs.el, i.e. define-minor-mode is not yet autoloaded.
Worse yet, simple.el is loaded before files.el so even if I load
easy-mmode.el I can't use define-minor-mode because it uses
file-name-sans-extension which is defined in files.el.

Of course, I can just keep those modes as is and simply add the
relevant code to make them behave "as if defined with define-minor-mode",
but I'd rather not have to do that.

Any idea what I can do ?
Should I define them in some other file than simple.el ?
If so which one ?


	Stefan

Re: where to define-minor-mode line-number-mode

[Richard Stallman]

You could put them in a new file and load it when you like.

However, I wonder what it is in simple.el that needs to
be loaded early.   Its essential mission is to contain
simple user commands, and if it sticks to that mission,
nothing would call it while building Emacs.

Perhaps it would be good to load simple.el later.
Anything in it that is called during load time could be moved
to subr.el, unless that is somehow ugly.