Re: Recent attempts at standardizing major mode definitions.

[Stefan Monnier]

> I see that yesterday I forgot to answer the following question:
> 
> Stefan Monnier wrote:
> 
>    I have the following requirements:
>    - it must be easy for a user to add abbrevs that are available in
>      all "related" modes.
> 
> Definitely, that is essential.
> 
>    - it must be easy for a user to add abbrevs that are only available in
>      a particular mode.
> 
> If the mode is not related to any other mode and is not a read-only
> type mode, say dired, help buffer, info and so on, definitely.

latex-mode is definitely related to plain-tex-mode which is definitely
related to text-mode and yet I want to have abbrevs specifically for
the Tex and LaTeX languages.
As for read-only buffers, abbrevs are irrelevant there anyway.

> Otherwise, I am hesitating as I already mentioned.
> 
>    - mode authors should be able to provide the above behavior without
>      having to think about it (because they generally don't, especially
>      since some of them don't even use abbrevs).
> 
> They can not do it completely without thinking.  They have to make a
> decision about which abbrev tables to use, regardless of whether we
> implement inheritance.  It is possible that say an abbrev table of a
> mode is perfectly suitable for another mode even if the syntax-table
> of another mode is more suitable as the parent syntax table.  Such
> situations can occur.  I would rather have somebody who never uses
> abbrevs think about which abbrev-table to use, than, say , have
> somebody who never uses font-lock worry about font-lock-defaults.

Many authors just don't think about abbrevs at all, so you end up
with either no abbrev-table or with some default.  I just want the
default to be as close to possible to the most likely "ideal".
A new table that inherits from the parent is a pretty damn good default,
if you ask me.


        Stefan