On Thu, Mar 19, 2020 at 1:57 PM davidson <david...@freevolt.org> wrote:
> On Thu, 19 Mar 2020, davidson wrote: > > On Wed, 18 Mar 2020, Default User wrote: > [snip] > > >> dummy@dummy:~$ sudo aptitude show emacs > >> [sudo] password for default: > > > > Just FYI, it would greatly surprise me if you actually needed root > > privileges for aptitude's "show" command. I wager you could get the > > same information with > > > > dummy@dummy:~$ aptitude show emacs > > > > and save yourself a password entry. > > > > (I am wagering, not promising, because I use apt-get exclusively, > > *apt-get and apt-cache > > > never aptitude.) > [big snip] > > > Then, in emacs, do > > > > M-x info > > > > This brings up a menu of info documentation properly installed on your > > system. You'll want to traverse "Emacs" > "Abbrevs". > > I now see that GW Haywood has already pointed you to a version of the > same document, posted on the web: > > > https://lists.debian.org/msgid-search/alpine.deb.2.21.2003191433310.9...@piplus.local.jubileegroup.co.uk > > -- > The day will come | Last words, August Spies (1855--1887). > When our silence will be | Hanged, by the U.S. state of Illinois, > More powerful than | alongside fellow journalists > The voices you strangle today | Adolf Fischer and Albert Parsons. > Davidson, thank you for the link to the information. 1) Yes, "dummy@dummy:~$ aptitude show emacs" does work just fine. I guess I just got into the habit of using "sudo" more than I really need to. 2) The book is Second Edition (1996). Almost a quarter of a century old, but still quite useful, especially for a "mature" program like Emacs. 3) I do have "emacs-common-non-dfsg" installed, and do have "non-free" in my /etc/apt/sources.list. I do use "info" from time to time, but I more often use man pages, or just search online. 4) The problem has been SOLVED. I believe it was due to the insistence on Emacs on using ~/.emacs.d/abbrev_defs to store the saved abbreviations, instead of ~/.abbrev_defs as suggested in the book. I am guessing this is due to the change in recent years to using ".d" supplemental directories. The fix was to change a section of".emacs" from this (in the book): (setq-default abbrev-mode t) (read-abbrev-file "~/.abbrev_defs") (setq save-abbrevs t) to this: (setq-default abbrev-mode t) (setq save-abbrevs t) (setq abbrev-file-name "~/.emacs.d/abbrev_defs") ;; tell emacs where to read abbrev definitions from . . . ;; (read-abbrev-file "~/.emacs.d/abbrev_defs") This line may be obsolete [from "Learning GNU Emacs"] [Note: it seems to work either with or without (read-abbrev-file "~/.emacs.d/abbrev_defs") being commented out]. So now "M-x write-abbrev-file" does seem to save the edited abbreviations as it was supposed to all along. I had mentioned that it was possible to manually edit ~/.emacs.d/abbrev_defs to remove the entry, and then save ~/.emacs.d/abbrev_defs, as a work-around. But if I should be able "To delete any abbreviation, delete the line for that abbreviation and save the file by typing M-x write-abbrev-file.", then I should be able to do so. Anyway, problem solved. Thanks to all for the help.
