Why aren't paragraph-s\(tart\|eparate\) buffer local by default?

Why aren't paragraph-s\(tart\|eparate\) buffer local by default?

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hi, Emacs!

Why aren't paragraph-s\(tart\|eparate\) buffer local?  There doesn't seem
to be any call for having global values for them since so many major
modes (amongst them C Mode, Lisp mode, Texinfo mode) give these variables
mode specific values.

The reason I ask is that a CC Mode user erroneously called (c-set-style)
in a buffer that wasn't a CC Mode buffer.  This set these two paragraph
variables to style values.

Unfortunately, the CC Mode initialisation hadn't been done for the
buffer.  In particular, the the two paragraph variables hadn't been made
buffer local.  So the global values got overwritten.

May I suggest that paragraph-s\(tart\|eparate\) be made buffer local by
default?

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Munich, Germany)

Re: Why aren't paragraph-s\(tart\|eparate\) buffer local by default?

[Richard Stallman]

    Why aren't paragraph-s\(tart\|eparate\) buffer local?  There doesn't seem
    to be any call for having global values for them since so many major
    modes (amongst them C Mode, Lisp mode, Texinfo mode) give these variables
    mode specific values.

There is certainly a reason for these variables to have global defaults.
The paragraph commands can be used even in Fundamental mode.

We could consider making them automatically local whenever set;
that doesn't require eliminating the global defaults.  I am not
sure this is bad, but it isn't obvious to me it is desirable.

I think the right fix for the problem you encountered is to make
c-set-style check that the buffer has an appropriate mode before it
does anything else.


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Re: Why aren't paragraph-s\(tart\|eparate\) buffer local by default?

[Stefan Monnier]

> Unfortunately, the CC Mode initialisation hadn't been done for the
> buffer.  In particular, the the two paragraph variables hadn't been made
> buffer local.  So the global values got overwritten.

Which is why I strongly recommend to always use

      (set (make-local-variable 'foo) bar)

rather than

       (make-local-variable 'foo)
       ...
       ...
       (setq foo bar)

Putting the two parts in different functions is asking for trouble,


        Stefan