Re: define-abbrev

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>]

> With emacs -Q sometimes it's gone, sometimes
> not. Strange enough: with -q sometimes also. Maybe the
> daylight or the moon have influence too? :)

> Error occurs at nearly the last line 898

>       (apply 'define-abbrev table elt))))

I'm pretty sure I know where the error is signalled and how to fix this
symptom, but depending on the cause the real fix might be conmpletely
different, and the cause is elsewhere (the problem seems to be that
you're somehow using an abbrev-table that was not created by
make-abbrev-table).

> BTW having a closer look at the code, I see abbrevs
> still downcased.

The behavior of abbrevs is not supposed to have changed *at all*.
If you look at the patch I installed, it only changes
doc/lispref/abbrevs.texi, but not doc/emacs/abbrevs.texi.

If you want case-fixed abbrevs, then you need to specify it in elisp:
there is currently no command to do that.  The way to specify it is to
pass ":case-fixed t" to define-abbrev.

I'll let other people take care of such UI-level issues because I do not
use abbrevs in this way at all, so I have no idea what would be
convenient and what would be insufferable.

> Can you tell me an example where this downcasing is
> useful, why it's introduced once?

No idea.  I just preserved the old behavior.

> For me both GNU and Xemacs abbrev.c codes look much
> simpler than new abbrev.el.

Tell me which part is too complex, and I may be able to help you
understand it (and add relevant comments in the code as I do that).


        Stefan