Re: how can I tell emacs to treat a text file as html?

[Joe Corneli <jcorneli@math.utexas.edu>]

   > | > But, note, what you should really do is byte compile the .emacs,
   > | > using
   > | No.  That's almost never a good idea.
   > Is it a bad idea, and why?

   Maybe you'll never suffer from any bad effect, but since the .emacs file
   rarely if ever contains any loop (the only place where byte-compilation of
   .emacs has a fighting chance of having a measurable impact on execution
   time), it's just not worth the trouble.

As the person who brought forth this mildly contentious and somewhat
silly notion of "byte compiling .emacs", let me just mention that I
(also) always byte compile packages that I write, and that I think
_that_ does have a beneficial effect.  The compiler will catch things
like undefined variables & other such bugs that the interpreter
doesn't catch.  'Pon fixing these, the code is improved.  The fact
that you _shouldn't_ do this in .emacs (now accepted by me, and I'm
planning on entering a .emacs rehab) sorta/kinda rests on the
principle that there shouldn't be much code in the .emacs anyway (see
another recent thread).