On Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 08:04:25PM -0600, lee wrote:
> > by putting it in a hook that is run when post-mode is run. normally, a major
> > mode will have such a hook, simply called <major-mode>-hook, i.e. in the
> > case of
> > post-mode it should be post-mode-hook. so:
> >
> > (add-hook 'post-mode-hook 'turn-on-flyspell)
> >
> > should *probably* do it. (but check the documentation for flyspell-mode to
> > find
> > out what the best way is to turn it on. i don't use it so i don't know...)
>
> It doesn't work.
At the risk of stating the obvious, you need to put that in your ~/.emacs
(~/.xemacs? or wasn't it in some subdir with xemacs? I don't know...) and then
restart xemacs to make sure it takes effect.
> Unfortunately, I couldn't find documentation about
> flyspell-mode yet. And I don't know what the "hooks" do.
a hook is simply a list of functions that are run when a certain mode is
started.
> There is some
> documentation, like about elisp, but what I haven't found is a
> documentation that would explain things like that so that one could
> learn how to program emacs.
Emacs comes with an introduction to Elisp and the full documentation to Elisp.
Just start info mode (C-h i) and search for 'Emacs Lisp Intro' and 'Elisp'.
> Well, I just tried things to get it to work, it doesn't really matter
> why they didn't. But one thing I tried was to append flyspell-mode to
> auto-mode-alist just like post-mode:
Which is not going to work, because only the first matching mode in
auto-mode-alist is activated. That's why auto-mode-alist should only be used for
major modes, not for minor modes. Minor modes (like flyspell-mode) should be
turned on via mode hooks.
> (setq auto-mode-alist
> (append
> '(("/tmp/mutt-cat-.*" . (post-mode flyspell-mode)))
> auto-mode-alist))
>
> That's logical and should work, but it doesn't.
That's not going to work because of the way auto-mode-alist works. It requires
exactly one mode function in each option, it does not handle more. (Essentially
because auto-mode-alist is for setting the major mode of a buffer and a buffer
can only have one major mode.)
> I googled and found
> some examples where flyspell-mode was turned on automatically and
> tried some of them, to no avail. Some used (flyspell-mode 1), others
> seemed to make up functions to turn it on, and there were some that
> used hooks.
The correct way for turning it on for specific modes only is through hooks.
AFAICT, the line above should really work. I have no idea why it doesn't in your
case...
> You're right --- but I didn't want to subsribe to another mailing list
> or forum to ask only one simple question, and since there are users
> here using emacs as editor for mutt like I do, they might know how to
> do it, and it might be of use to those who don't --- and thus not too
> badly misplaced here. But maybe it turns out to be a very difficult
> question?
it shouldn't be difficult... (add-hook 'post-mode 'turn-on-flyspell) should do
the trick...
--
Joost Kremers
Life has its moments
