> This is much unsatisfactory. I'm currently thinking to apply the
> attached patch to sort out the disorders of mode names. It works as
> follows:
> (a) It uses the names without `TeX-' prefix for LaTeX-mode,
> plain-TeX-mode and TeX-mode.
> (b) Those mode definitions are overwritten, prior to emacs 29, when
> tex-mode.el is loaded. So the patch saves the function
> definitions of AUCTeX major modes in the symbol property
> `auctex-function-definition', and restores them after tex-mode.el
> is loaded via `with-eval-after-load'.
Looks good to me (I mean: it doesn't literally look good, but given what
we have, this seems about as clean as it gets).
Only detail, I'd move the
(if (eq (symbol-function 'plain-TeX-mode) #'plain-tex-mode)
(defalias 'plain-TeX-mode nil))
(if (eq (symbol-function 'LaTeX-mode) #'latex-mode)
(defalias 'LaTeX-mode nil))
(if (eq (symbol-function 'TeX-mode) #'tex-mode)
(defalias 'TeX-mode nil))
into a function and merge it with the similar code which uses
`auctex-function-definition`.
> 2. ConTeXt modes
> The design of ConTeXt modes doesn't match well with
> `define-derived-mode' as explained below.
> ConTeXt modes consist of "primary" mode `ConTeXt-mode' and "sub"
> modes such as `ConTeXt-en-mode' and `ConTeXt-nl-mode'. Sub modes are
> expected to work when they are called explicitly as well.
> At first sight, it seems natural to implement the sub modes as
> derived modes of the primary mode. However, simple implementation
> doesn't work because the primary `ConTeXt-mode' is supposed to
> detect the document's language (english, dutch...) and call the sub
> mode according to the detected language. Thus simple implementation
> leads to loop of the primary mode and duplication of hook calls.
> I chose to implement the sub modes as derived modes of the primary
> mode and move the "detecting the language and calling the sub mode"
> phase of the primary mode into `change-major-mode-after-body-hook'.
> In addition, the phase now bypasses call to the sub mode and calls
> the "body" part of the sub mode independently. Hence the sub mode's
> keymap and hook are ignored in that case. This might be considered as
> a bad behavior.
> In addition, I'm not sure whether such usage is suitable for
> `change-major-mode-after-body-hook' or not.
That's not very pretty, indeed. The fundamental problem you're trying
to solve is the same as the one we have with `tex-mode` since that
function is used both as "parent mode" and as "dispatch to the
appropriate child-mode".
In `tex-mode` we've tried various approaches over the years, none of
which are elegant :-(
What have now is:
(define-derived-mode tex-mode text-mode "generic-TeX"
[...]
(tex-common-initialization))
(advice-add 'tex-mode :around #'tex--redirect-to-submode
;; Give it lower precedence than normal advice, so
;; AUCTeX's advice takes precedence over it.
'((depth . 50)))
(defvar tex-mode--recursing nil)
(defun tex--redirect-to-submode (orig-fun)
[...]
(if (or delay-mode-hooks tex-mode--recursing)
[...]))
In the case of `ConTeXt-mode`, maybe the better option is to make the
submodes be minor modes?
If at all possible, I recommend to use different names for the parent
mode and the dispatch function :-)
> 3. Additional menu item
> I chose `text-mode' as the parent of the base mode
> `TeX--VirTeX-mode' and `Texinfo-mode'. This is reasonable because
> those modes called `text-mode-hook' so far. On the other hand, there
> is a side effect that "Text" menu appears in the menu bar in all
> AUCTeX major modes, which may be distracting for some users.
Maybe `nil` (a.k.a. `fundamental-mode`) is a better parent, which more
closely matches the historical behavior of AUCTeX?
TeX is one of those formats that sits halfway between `text-mode` and
`prog-mode` (like (SG|X)ML, as well).
> 4. Directory local variables
> (a) I simplified the way to have `LaTeX-mode' as the value of
> `major-mode' of `japanese-LaTeX-mode' while it can read directory
> local variables prepared for japanese-LaTeX-mode. Now there is a
> line
> :after-hook (setq major-mode 'LaTeX-mode)
> in the definition of `(define-derived-mode japanese-LaTeX-mode...'
> and cumbersome interaction with `hack-local-variables' is
> discarded.
> This solution works for most cases, but would break if the mode
> hooks contain user codes which assume mode name without
> `japanese-' prefix.
> If it turns out that such breakage does exist and no workaround
> is found, we'd have to go back to the former approach.
FWIW, that's a cleaner solution than what I had come up when I looked
at it.
Stefan
